Heroin Uncut: The Truth About the Crisis

New Jersey 101.5 and Carrier Clinic present Heroin Uncut: The Truth About the Crisis a blunt, honest series of articles, videos and podcast episodes exploring just how heroin has tightened its grip on New Jersey — and what we can do about it.

New episodes of Heroin Uncut, featuring host Jay Lassiter, are released every Monday on NJ1015.com and on the NJ 101.5 app. Subscribe to the Heroin Uncut podcast on iTunes and Google Play, or the NJ 101.5 app.

Also: Follow Heroin Uncut on Facebook and On Twitter.

Episodes of Heroin Uncut so far (newest up top):

• Addiction in New Jersey: I have no f—ing hope left — Jay wanted to end Heroin Uncut with a message of hope, a call to action. But he's tired, he's disappointed — and he's incredibly angry.

• Addiction is a disease — Why this addict is absolutely sure —Think addiction to drugs is something other than a disease? How about alcohol dependence? It’s an ongoing debate in the media, around kitchen tables, and online — especially with with New Jersey's opiate crisis getting more and more out of control.

How to use Narcan — Learn in under 3 minutes — For the last few months, New Jersey residents have been able to been able to purchase naloxone — the opioid antidote better known by the brand name Narcan — without a prescription. Know how to use it and you could save a life.

Rehab, jail and hard truths: What addicts say we don’t understand — Vince, Erik and Brian are on their way to being addiction success stories. They’re each working hard to put their lives back together after years of drub abuse and poor choices — and they’re getting a lot of help. But they also know all the ways the system can fall down. A special extended edition of Heroin Uncut.

Marijuana vs. opioids — One is illegal, the other is killing us — has always believed that maybe, just maybe, if we regulated prescription opiates half as zealously as we regulate medical cannabis, we’d avoid a world of hurt.

• Taking note on addiction — hard lessons learned by NJ journalists —Everyone's talking about the opioid crisis — because it's everywhere. But too few of those making the important decisions and trying to bring light to the problem really understand it.

• Carter Stone was ‘better than the addiction’ — but it killed him anyway
 — There’s so much more to who he was. So much more to the choices he made — good and bad. So much more to the hole he’d left in the lives of relatives and friends trying to rebuild their own lives.

• The heroes and villains of New Jersey's opioid crisis — New Jersey's heroin crisis did not create itself. Big Pharma, greedy lobbyists, and dimwitted policy makers created the perfect conditions for addiction to take hold and to thrive.

• How Narcan, a great cop and a convicted killer saved my life — No conversation so far has stood out more than then one Jay had with Anthony — a recovering addict who recounted his experience being revived with Narcan.

• The Opioid Industrial Complex — This is who gets rich off your addiction — Acknowledging that addiction is big business helps clear up what’s really driving New Jersey’s opioid crisis.

Narcan is saving lives — and that's bad news — Narcan is an important tool in our war against opiates. But our reliance on it means things have already gone too far.

• Needle exchanges — Why NJ must give drug users syringes right now — An uncomfortable solution? You bet. It's also why host HIV-positive and drug-recovering host Jay Lassiter doesn't have hepatitis today.

• Heroin Uncut: Defining New Jersey's drug problem — Our language about drugs is a jumbled mess. If we don't understand the problem, we can't fix it.

New episodes will be released every Saturday.

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