Ep 221 We’ve Been Treating Addiction Backwards with Dee-Dee Stout

What if the way we’ve been taught to think about addiction and recovery is actually getting in the way of helping people? In this episode, I sit down with harm reduction pioneer DeeDee Stout to talk about autonomy, moderation, abstinence, AA, treatment, and why meeting people where they are can make the difference.

Timestamps:

00:00 Change your drinking intro

06:21 S*icide in AA

09:09 Unraveling AA beliefs about recovery

16:36 How AA became the default

20:17 Relapse prevention, harm reduction + abstinence

28:22 Addiction treatment w/o abstinence

36:00 AA: mainstream recovery narrative + policy

46:39 D*ath threats from AA members

53:16 Brad Pitt drinking moderately

58:14 Thinking about drinking again