Instagram and Facebook banned vital sobriety podcasts — for ‘promoting drug use’

Being wrongly accused of selling drugs would suck for most people — more so, no doubt, if you’re a sober podcaster dedicated to helping others recover from drug and alcohol addiction.

Page Six hears that Meta — which owns Instagram and Facebook — took down or “restricted” the social media accounts of several hit recovery podcasts because it suspected them of “promoting” drug use or even dealing drugs.

The tech giant restored the accounts after we asked about them for this story.

The “Dopey” podcast — which has featured guests including Jamie Lee Curtis, Marc Maron, Dr Drew Pinsky, Cat Marnell and DMC of Run DMC, among many others — was suddenly removed altogether last week with its 48,000 followers getting nothing but empty page when they visited.

Meanwhile, Jeannine Coulter of the “Chasing Heroine” podcast — who has spoken about recovery in a TedX talk — told us that her account had been heavily restricted, seemingly because of a video she posted in January in which she discussed the potentials upsides of psychological trauma.

Dopey’s host, David Manheim, a longtime server at Katz Deli, tells us that these and accounts like them “provide connection, comedy, and community for hundred of thousands of people in and out of recovery.”

But more than the numbers, many followers relied on the account for their recovery. “Dopey’s [Instagram] pinned post showed our 25 weekly [recovery] Zoom meetings,” he told us.

The pod and associated social media account also helps people get into recovery. “We sent four people to treatment this month,” he told us.

Manheim — who hosted the podcast “about drugs, addiction and dumb s**t” with fellow addict Chris O’Connor before his tragic death in 2018 — told us that he wasn’t able to contact Instagram after it shut down the account.

The host suspects that the problem arose because Meta is using AI to vet content and mistook a page fighting drug use with a page encouraging it.

“I don’t think Meta meant to cause harm,” he said, “But the system they’ve built is doing serious damage to the online recovery world.”

Coulter told us that her page went from millions of views per month to just hundreds. “I lost hundreds of followers daily,” she told us. “It’s just so frustrating.”

“We strictly prohibit the buying and selling of illicit drugs on our platforms and have implemented strong measures to detect and remove such content,” a Meta spokesperson told us, “Given the subject matter, at times we may err on the side of removing more high risk drug content, rather than too little, which may occasionally result in content being mistakenly removed. When this occurs we act quickly to correct these errors.”

The company noted that it is proud that its platform is used for helping with recovery from substance abuse and noted that it specifically works with recovery organizations including Song For Charlie, the Ad Council’s Drop The F-Bomb campaign, Mobilize Recovery and Partnership to End Addiction to use “social media as tools to strengthen their efforts in combating this crisis.”