As the survivor of multiple relapses and near-fatal experiences with his addiction to alcohol and other drugs, William C. Moyers knows what it’s like to desperately need a good treatment program but not know how to find one. He and his parents, journalist Bill Moyers and Judith Moyers, talk about their experience confronting William’s addiction and the journey through intervention, treatment, and recovery. William Moyers’ book Now What? An Insider’s Guide to Addiction and Recovery leads readers through recognizing when someone needs help, finding a quality treatment program, navigating the treatment process, and establishing a support system after treatment.

Can one blissful moment change your life? Producer Andy Mills introduces us to Reverend Mike Young, a man who can pinpoint a pivotal handful of minutes in the 1960s that he claims did just that. As a college student, he was part of a study in which ...

Barry Meier, reporter for The New York Times covering business, public health and the law, talks about the FDA's investigation into energy drink-related deaths, and how the agency regulates products that straddle the line between food and drug.

This week’s Please Explain looks at the outbreak of fungal meningitis from contaminated steroid shots. We’ll find out how epidemiologists trace outbreaks like this to their origins and what compounding pharmacies are and how they work. Dr. Emil Hiesiger, clinical associate professor of neurology, NYU  School of Medicine, and Dr. William Schaffner, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University and president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, explain.

Since the mid 1990s, 16 states and the District of Columbia have passed medical marijuana laws. In some states, like California, a vast growing and dispensary system has sprung up for a drug that the federal government still considers illegal. Journalist Jim Rendon went behind the scenes with many of the people who work in what is both an illicit and quasi-legal industry. His book is called Supercharged: How Outlaws Hippies and Scientists Reinvented Marijuana.

Álvaro Uribe Velez, president of Colombia from 2002 to 2010, talks about leading the country’s transformation from a “failed state,” besieged by drug kingpins, terrorist groups, and extreme poverty into a far more peaceful, stable, modern democracy. His book No Lost Causes  reveals how President Uribe dealt with the FARC, restored the rule of law across the country, and gives a behind-the-scenes look at dealings with various world leaders.

This election season the candidates have focused their message on the employment and the middle class. These issues are no doubt important, but what is the hyper-focus on economy leaving out of the campaign? The Takeaway series "Don't Mention It" looks at issues ignored this election year. Today, our subject is the war on drugs.

More than 100 athletes have been banned from competing in the London Olympics because of doping suspensions. Doping allegations have become common in many sports, most notably in cycling, baseball, and track and field. Dr. Dennis Cardone, associate professor of sports medicine at NYU Langone’s Center for Musculoskeletal Care, and Dr. Gary Wadler, clinical associate professor in the Department of medicine at Hofstra University, explain how performance-enhancing drugs work, how they're detected, and how doping has been addressed in sports. Dr. Wadler served as the Chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) Prohibited List and Methods Sub-Committee and serves as an ex-officio member of WADA’s Health, Medicine, and Research Committee. He is the lead author of the textbook Drugs and the Athlete.

Eric Schneiderman, New York State Attorney General and co-chair of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, talks about his latest efforts to combat synthetic drugs and prescription drug abuse, plus other items on his agenda.

In January 2003, The Lancet — one of the world's oldest and most respected medical journals — published an article championing the combination of two drugs (ACE inhibitors and ARBs) in treating certain types of kidney disease. But then an investigation concluded that the data in the study had been collected in a way that made it scientifically unsound. The Lancet printed a retraction, but thousands of patients still receive these drugs in combination.

Entering a nursing home is a decision that many of us will make for ourselves and for the people we love. And when we make that decision, it’s with the hope that the highest level of care and professionalism will be administered. But for Alison Weingartner, this wasn’t exactly the case. She joins the program along with Kay Lazar, a health reporter for the Boston Globe who’s been covering Weingartner’s case.

On today’s Underreported, directors Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher talk about the people who serve as human test subjects for medications being developed by pharmaceutical companies. They look at how those medications are being marketed, sold, and used throughout the United States after they’ve been approved. It’s the subject of their documentary, “Off Label,” which is being shown at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Please Explain is all about the anti-anxiety medications benzodiazepenes. Psychologist Dr. Douglas Mennin and Lisa Miller, contributing editor at New York magazine, whose article “Listening to Xanax” appears in the March 26 issue of the magazine, explain how they work and why they’re addictive.

One of Roc-A-Fella Records founders, Kareem “Biggs” Burke, pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges of conspiring to distribute marijuana. See the indictment here.

Emmy Award-winning actress Kristen Johnston discusses her memoir, Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster, in which she writes about her addictions to alcohol and drugs and how she overcame them. She also talks about the stigma that’s often attached to recovery and her efforts to open the city’s first addiction-recovery high school.

Kathleen Sharp details the bitter war between pharmaceutical giants Amgen and Johnson & Johnson, and their attempts to push a “miracle” drug by using financial kickbacks to doctors, bribes and Medicare fraud, and using patients as guinea pigs. In Blood Feud: The Man Who Blew the Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever she tells the story of Mark Duxbury, a J&J sales rep who became a whistleblower. The case is now unfolding in a federal court.

New Yorker contributor Mattathias Schwartz discusses a police and military assault on the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica, in May 2010, that resulted in the deaths of more than seventy people. The article “A Massacre in Jamaica” appears in the December 12 issue of The New Yorker.

Each year, millions of dollars of Mexican drug money pass through the hands of American Drug Enforcement Administration officials. Undercover American narcotics agents launched the money laundering operation in order to trace the drug cartels. This is not the first instance of a U.S. governmental agency using illegal means to fight the war against drugs in Mexico. While the effectiveness of either program stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. remains unclear, their impact on Mexican citizens is less ambiguous.

The 10 million Americans who take Lipitor to deal with their high cholesterol are about to get some good news. The 20 year patent on the blockbuster prescription drug expires Wednesday, creating an opening for other companies to manufacture cheaper, chemically identical generic versions of the drug. Two companies have products coming out on the market to entice the 3.5 million users of Lipitor away. But Pfizer, the makers of Lipitor − which derives almost a fifth of its revenue from $11 billion in sales of the drug — has its own plan for keeping patients on the name brand.

On Friday, the FDA ruled that cancer drug Avastin should not be used to treat breast cancer because Avastin’s risky side-effects outweigh its benefits for breast cancer patients. "Women who take Avastin for metastatic breast cancer risk potentially life threatening or serious side-effects, such as heart attacks or heart failure, severe high blood pressure, bleeding or hemorrhaging," FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg said.