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First Things Podcast

The Mind of an Addict

First Things Podcast

First Things

Religion & Spirituality

4.6699 Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode, Michael W. Clune joins the Mark Bauerlein to discuss his memoir on drug addiction and recovery, “White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin.” Music by Advent Chamber Orchestra via Creative Commons.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello there. This is Mark Bauerline with another conversation. Before we get to it, a word about one of our sponsors.

0:25.1

Located in the foothills of Wyoming's spectacular wind river range, Wyoming Catholic College,

0:30.7

an accredited four-year Great Books Institution is built on the ancient Western tradition of the liberal arts and the freedom of the American West.

0:41.6

The college offers its students an immersion in the primary sources of the classical tradition, the grandeur of the mountain wilderness, and the spiritual heritage of the Catholic

0:46.1

Church. Students experience the illumination of imagination and intellect through the great

0:50.2

books and traditional disciplines, literature and philosophy, mathematics and theology,

0:54.8

science and Latin, and an outdoor program second to none.

0:58.6

The college celebrated an in-person graduation with its seniors last year

1:02.8

and welcomed its largest freshman class ever this year.

1:06.6

Learn more about the college's unique space in the world of American higher education at

1:10.1

Wyoming Catholic.edu.

1:12.6

Michael Clune is Professor of Humanities at Case Western Reserve University.

1:17.6

He's the author of many things, including American literature in the free market, and a defense of judgment.

1:24.6

And also a book entitled Whiteout from several years ago, but that book is actually

1:30.3

coming out again this year with a new forward by the author. A related statement to that book

1:38.5

appeared in April in the Washington Post that crossed my eye an opinion piece entitled, Why Decriminalizing Drugs

1:48.4

is a Bad Idea, which gets us today's topic. Welcome, Professor Clune. Thank you. Glad to be

1:55.1

here. First of all, just tell us the book, Whiteout. What was that? What was it about? Yeah, so it's a book

2:03.6

it originally appeared 10 years ago, and they just published the 10-year anniversary edition

2:09.4

in March. And essentially, it's a memoir about my own experience with addiction and recovery,

2:21.0

addiction to heroin. And basically, in writing it, I was motivated by what I felt was an absence in a lot of the literature on

2:27.3

addiction, which didn't really speak to the dynamics, which led me, you know, which I felt to be the heart of addiction, which was

...

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