Welcome back to savvy psychologist. I'm Dr. Ellen Hendrickson and every week I'll help you

meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

So today's show is a little bit of a hybrid between the usual monologue and a guest interview.

So you can think of it as a buy one get one.

So first, we'll dive into the history of the opioid epidemic.

Look at the disconnect between research recommended opioid treatment

versus the most commonly administered treatment,

and we'll talk with podcast host and TEDx speaker Eric Zimmer,

who at the age of 24 was homeless, addicted to heroin, and facing long

jail sentences. Today he's a seasoned behavior coach and host of the excellent

podcast The One You Feed, based on an old

parable about two metaphorical wolves who battle within us. Okay, first, let's talk

history. To paraphrase the talking heads, how did we get here? How did the opioid epidemic become the opioid epidemic?

Well, let's begin where we are now. Every day, 130 Americans die from an

opioid overdose. And in 2017, that added up to more than 47,000 people.

It's to the point where, for the first time in decades, life expectancy in the U.S. is decreasing,

driven in part by opioid overdoses.

Now, the opioid epidemic didn't just develop from one seed.

It grew from many, and one sprouted in 1980 when a five-sentence letter to the editor was

published in one of the most prestigious medical journals, the New England Journal of Medicine,

which stated that opioids were not addictive.

And like a game of telephone gone bad, what followed was hundreds of citations of the letter

...