Skip to main content
Steven Murray

Steven Murray

Director of the SafeSpot Overdose Hotline and Associate Director of Overdose Prevention at Boston Medical Center; former paramedic and harm reduction leader.

Sep 16, 2026

27:39
And so I'd love for you to talk about that a little bit and, and why have you shifted to identifying as a drug user, and why do you think that's more impactful in the long term than identifying as a person in recovery?
27:55
What I've learned over time is that people identifying in recovery and clapping for one another makes other people who are in recovery feel good, and it makes normies feel good.
28:10
It doesn't have the same effect on families who have lost people, families who have someone who's still kinda in it, who they're worried about, and it doesn't make drug users feel good.
28:25
And so thinking about audience and my audience and who I sort of hope to reach is like, I wanna reach people who are using drugs.
28:34
I don't wanna put up that wall in any way that like-- 'cause it's not true, you know? Like, we all-- we're all drug users, and that's part of the hard part is like you go into any recovery community and you see excessive caffeine and nicotine use.
28:48
And so, like, those are drugs.
28:51
And so I don't really like-- Like the drugs that we've labeled as being dangerous or hard drugs or illicit pharmacologically are not any worse for you than any of the other things that we just regularly consume.
29:48
Mm-hmm.

We value your privacy

We use cookies to understand how you use our platform and to improve your experience. Click “Accept All” to consent, or “Decline non-essential” to opt out of non-essential cookies. Read our Privacy Policy.