I’m Joe Wright, a doctor based in Boston. I grew up in Sacramento and was a Northern Californian, living in Santa Cruz and then San Francisco, until my early 30s when I went to medical school. I’ve been in Boston ever since.

In my work I care for people who use drugs, or used to; and who lack homes, or used to. Like my patients, I work daily to answer the question: how do you transform your life, while learning to believe you are worthy just as you are?

I learned about community health and epidemiology from older gay men and younger queer people facing AIDS in San Francisco in the 1990s. I learned about T-cells from Polly Matzinger. I learned medicine in Boston. I’m learning about addiction, poverty, and resilience, among other things, from the patients I care for now.

I became a doctor because of AIDS. I became the doctor I am now because of the opioid overdose crisis.

All opinions on this site are mine and only mine, and I do not speak for my colleagues, my bosses, or my clinical teams. I’m board-certified in internal medicine and addiction medicine, which is part of how I know that this site is a bad way to look for specific medical advice.