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Opium’s Long Spell On Humankind

To truly understand today’s synthetic opioid crisis we have to go back thousands of years and examine the world of pure opium. Dr. John H. Halpern, a psychiatrist and former medical director of the Boston Center for Addiction Treatment, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how the power of the drug, first detected in Mesopotamia, has built to a crisis today. His new book, co-written with David Blistein, is called “Opium: How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned Our World.”