What Books Helped in Jail?

What if the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety—but connection? How does a woman go from 32 felony charges to the New York Times bestseller list, lunches with Oprah, and a life devoted to healing?Lara Love Hardin—literary agent, author, and prison-reform advocate—recounts her descent into opioid and heroin addiction, the shame that followed, and the community that made restoration possible. She traces the path from a Santa Cruz jail to acclaimed collaborations with figures like Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, and to her own bestselling memoir, The Many Lives of Mama Love. Listeners will hear how practices of community, meditation, and honest storytelling can transform compulsion into connection and purpose.

Key Ideas:

• “The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s connection”—why isolation fuels compulsion and how community begins to heal it.
• Shame’s long shadow: from the “neighbor from hell” headline to reclaiming dignity—and why public humiliation rarely rehabilitates.
• Skills for staying: meditation, naming emotions, and building a circle you can be messy with.
• Rat Park revisited: an experiment with morphine and rats, why context and community change outcomes
• From ghostwriter to guide: what Lara learned about forgiveness (and self-forgiveness) working with Archbishop Tutu and meeting the Dalai Lama.

⁠ ⁠⁠Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript⁠ for abridged episode with Lara Love Hardin⁠

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No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness.

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Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow ⁠@leeccamp ⁠

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