Episode 7: Addiction, the Treatment Industry, and Living Out Loud

Michael Lynch will tell you exactly what addiction is: using despite negative consequences. And he'll tell you what it isn't: a choice, a moral failing, or something prison can fix.He knows because he lived it. Foster care to gangs to prison to building a multimillion-dollar brand while destroying himself from the inside. The outside looked good. The inside was not. Police saved him without meaning to.That was 18 years ago. Since then: Stairway Recovery. 170 beds. Thousands of lives. Court advocacy fighting a system that punishes disease. And some of the rawest, most honest truth about what recovery actually takes.