Adria Volta
A podcast and a commentary on a London Underground line one morning made me acutely aware of the discrepancy in how we talk about addiction.
The podcast was an episode of Empathy for the devil with mental health and addiction specialists who compassionately explore the struggles and death of Rolling Stones member Brian Jones through the lens of his childhood, environment, and trauma. The comment was a muttered word, “junkie,” directed at a man asking for money in our carriage. That word overshadowed the podcast’s deeper questions: What brought this man to this situation? How was it a complex…