A Harrowing Story of Opioid Withdrawal

Every day doctors write more than 650,000 opioid prescriptions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In some of those cases, addiction follows. As a result, deaths from prescription opioids have more than quadrupled since 1999. My guest today has a unique vantage point on the problem. Travis Rieder is a bioethicist at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute for Bioethics, and he personally experienced a dependence on opioids. He wrote about it in the January issue of the journal “Health Affairs,” and a portion of that article was excerpted in the Washington Post. He joins Sheilah in studio.