36. Understanding the Complex Causes of Addiction

Addiction was common in the McDaid family. So when Carol, the youngest in her upper-middle-class household began using, the disease quickly took root. Carol sipped her first drink at age 12, and by 16 was using IV drugs. It wasn't until her drug use threatened her career that she decided to enter treatment. One in every ten people in the U.S. experiences drug addiction, which is nearly the entire population of Texas. In this episode, we seek to understand the varied causes and consequences of drug abuse, and how new pharmaceuticals that came onto the market in the late-90s—prescription opioids—changed the landscape of addiction for an entire generation. Featuring Carol McDaid, a D.C. lobbyist specializing in addiction and mental health policy, Diane Sevening, former President of the Association for Addiction Professionals and Assistant Professor at The University of South Dakota, and Marta Michelle Colon, Founder of BeGutsy, a national campaign that educates the Latinx community on the dangers of opioid u