(The Guardian) – Kirsten Smith was 19 when she first tried heroin; within a few years she was in prison. She says she willingly made bad choices and wants society to stop treating addiction as a disease

Smith belongs to a new generation of addiction scientists who are using their personal experiences to inform their research. Their focus is on helping people with substance-use disorders to identify the environmental factors that lead them to use drugs, and encouraging them to take action to change those factors.

In Smith’s own research at Johns Hopkins, which includes clinical trials and lab-based pharmacological studies, she interviews people with substance-use disorders about their experience of self-medication with unregulated substances like kratom. Instead of asking how the medical system can best force people into sobriety, Smith’s research asks how people with substance-use disorders have learned to manage their addictions themselves. (Read More)