In this interview, Dr. Jonnie McLeod discusses her forty-year long career as a physician and as a central figure in Charlotte's medical community. She discusses the role her gender has played in her education and career, including the sexism she has faced over the years. She also explains the importance of female professional mentors, and how supportive her husband has been of her career. Dr. McLeod explains how she came to develop the sex education program for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system in the 1960s and discusses the resistance to the program by certain organizations in the city. Her work with the school system lead to her involvement in the early 1970s with the treatment and prevention of substance abuse in young people, an issue to which Dr. McLeod would devote her future career. She describes the development of Charlotte's first drug treatment center, Open House (later called the McLeod Addictive Disease Center). She discusses her ongoing work at the time of interview including chairing the Impaired Physicians Committee, and AIDS education and outreach. Dr. McLeod concludes by discussing challenges facing the medical community such as substance abuse by doctors and the obstructive effect insurance companies can have on providing treatment for substance abuse.