Cory Monteith: The Cult of Powerlessness Claims Another Victim

Every addict knows that while it’s hard to overdose on heroin alone, it’s pretty easy to kill yourself by mixing with alcohol.  You have to be careful about that.  Benzos and alcohol are also a deadly mix.  Surely Cory Monteith, the beautiful young star of the hit TV show Glee, was aware of this.  And yet, he died from exactly this cocktail, like so many other drug addicts.  By all accounts, he didn’t intend to kill himself.  The power of addiction was just too strong.  He couldn’t resist the urge.
Continue reading Cory Monteith: The Cult of Powerlessness Claims Another Victim

A conversation with Columbia neuroscientist Dr. Carl Hart

Dr. Hart is a tenured professor at Columbia and expert on the science and pharmacology of illicit drugs.  He grew up in the Miami ghetto where he experienced first hand the scourge of drug addiction and the impact on his community.  He entered neuroscience with the goal of curing addiction, but he discovered during the course of his career, much to his surprise, that in fact drugs had little to do with the problems that he saw.  In fact, it was the draconian drug laws and heavy handed enforcement that created misery and injustice for members of his family and community, much moreso than the drugs themselves — which he now claims, based on his years of research, are not really so dangerous after all. Continue reading A conversation with Columbia neuroscientist Dr. Carl Hart