Radio lab podcast “The Fix”

Name______________________________________ Questions on the Radiolab podcast “The Fix”

1. What drug did the French doctor use to help curb his cravings for alcohol?

2. The female journalist telling the story mentions that she was “torn” while attempting to write the piece on the doctor and the medicine to deal with addiction. Why was she torn?

3. How did addicts describe the cravings they would have for whatever it was they were addicted to?

4. The podcast tells the story of Ed (the paralyzed individual) who was one of the first individuals to explain the consequences of using Baclofen. What did Ed notice when he would increase the dose of this drug?

5. Why do you think some doctors were prescribing this drug off label?

6. What does the drug Baclofen (and others like it) actually do? How effective are they?

7. Why aren’t these drugs being used more often to treat addiction?

8. What are the two ways of seeing addiction mentioned in the podcast?

9. How do the individuals being interviewed (mainly doctors) compare the addiction situation with the depression situation?

10. What is “evidence-based treatment”? How did this help Billy, the individual who suffered from alcoholism?

11. What did researchers mean when they said that it seems like addiction is a “weakness born of strength”? In other words, researchers thing that people who are more likely to become addicts actually had an advantage in evolutionary terms…what would this advantage have been and how has that turned into a negative thing today?