\n
Comment on this story<\/title><path d=\"M14 14V2H2v9.47h8.18L12.43 13ZM3 10.52V3h10v9.23l-2.5-1.66Z\"\/><\/svg><\/button><\/p>\n<p>Comment<\/p>\n<p><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"teaser-content grid-center\">\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">In her 2018 bestseller, \u201c<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/read.amazon.com\/kp\/embed?asin=B078D67JCF&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_Y2MAKTB7JSANFEZJZ31C&tag=thewaspos09-20\" rel=\"noopener\">Dopesick<\/a>,\u201d Beth Macy presented a staggering picture of the opioid catastrophe that continues to upend lives and communities across America. In \u201c<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/read.amazon.com\/kp\/embed?asin=B09N3GVQ3G&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_EXSAR2DSK7PH1V621X37&tag=thewaspos09-20\" rel=\"noopener\">Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America\u2019s Overdose Crisis<\/a>,\u201d she is back with a portrait of the compassionate and practical people who have stepped in to help stem the tens of thousands of drug deaths that still destroy families every year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Macy uses a biblical story to capture the work of the volunteers and outreach workers who are dedicated to aiding addicted people. She draws on the tale of Lazarus, who had died of an illness and was entombed for four days until Jesus him brought back to life. Before Jesus acted, he asked his followers to roll away a stone that lay across the tomb\u2019s entrance. In \u201cRaising Lazarus,\u201d Macy calls the workers she writes about \u201cstone-rollers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">It\u2019s an image she borrowed from the Rev. Michelle Mathis, co-founder of the Olive Branch Ministry of western North Carolina, one of the groups in the book. As overdose deaths escalated in the United States \u2014 more than 1 million since 1996, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention \u2014 these groups stepped in to attempt \u201cwhat officials have failed for decades to do: keep people alive,\u201d Macy writes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Macy\u2019s stone-rollers regard the people they treat as equals of moral weight, respect and worth. They do not stigmatize, judge or shun these drug users. Their work is called \u201charm reduction,\u201d and it sometimes ventures into illegal activity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">\u201cIn the richest country in the world, treatment of the sickest, neediest people fell to volunteers risking arrest,\u201d Macy writes. Out of their own pockets, they purchase clean needles, naloxone and fentanyl test strips. They test for hepatitis C, then treat it. All kinds of weather finds them trooping out to homeless encampments and drug \u201ctrap houses\u201d to deliver food, water, blankets and other first-aid supplies. They provide safe places to shoot up. They deliver \u201cunconditional positive regard\u201d \u2014 something Macy stresses is essential for people struggling to get through each day. Their work is funded by bake sales, T-shirt sales and GoFundMe drives. Often working underground, they are what Macy calls \u201cgood criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Such strategies have hardly been embraced by a nation where total abstinence, \u201ctough love\u201d or submission to a higher power is regarded as \u201ctreatment.\u201d The high costs of not doing harm reduction recur throughout the book. Macy cites numerous \u201cstate and local politicians who wrongly blame suffering people for their own demise.\u201d The lack of humanity was exemplified when a Kiwanis Club leader commented at a community meeting that when people relapse, \u201cwe should let \u2019em die and take their organs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">The book covers every aspect of the crisis \u2014 the science of addiction, the history of the problem, the justice system that, while acknowledging addiction as an illness, treats addicted people merely as criminals. These are interspersed with accounts of the legal battles to hold the Sackler family (owners of opioid-maker Purdue Pharma) accountable for what Macy calls the \u201ctaproot of the opioid crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Shoe-leather reporting took Macy to cemeteries, committee meetings, hearings, court proceedings and protests. Death by drugs, she emphasizes, results from a devastating convergence: Decline of meaningful work. High levels of occupational injury. Failed <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/2021\/06\/17\/war-drugs-turns-50-today-its-time-make-peace\/?itid=lk_inline_manual_15\" rel=\"noopener\">War on Drugs<\/a> policies. Lack of access to health care. Profound disengagement by the recovery community from evidence-based, medication-assisted treatment. The drug buprenorphine (bupe), for instance, has been shown in multiple studies to prevent opioid deaths, but many in law enforcement dismiss its use as just swapping one drug for another.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">In Mount Airy, N.C., the hometown of actor Andy Griffith, which bills itself as the fictional and idyllic Mayberry of the 1960s \u201cAndy Griffith Show,\u201d<b> <\/b>we meet Wendy Odum. \u201cMy husband and I are now raising our four grandchildren and so are all the grandparents we know,\u201d she says. \u201cAll our kids are dead.\u201d Addiction has been taking lives there for three generations: Odum was addicted herself after being prescribed opioids after a fall. Her mother, too, died from an overdose.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">What, then, is the solution? The \u201creal magic wand is to give up on the rigid notion that a single fix exists,\u201d Macy writes. Her book is a call to \u201cradically rethink addiction care, to do more than give lip service to the throwaway line \u2014 addiction is a disease \u2014 and to treat it like one.\u201d That means adopting the stone-rollers\u2019 tactics: needle exchanges, HIV and hepatitis C testing, safe places for people to take drugs when they must, supportive assistance when they are ready to try treatment \u2014 which should be \u201cfree and easily accessible.\u201d She calls for a Cabinet-level drug czar and a nationwide system of clinics that provide mental health care along with addiction care. Treatment should not be left to the<b> <\/b>\u201cwhims of local boards who subscribe to abstinence-only anti-medication models.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Macy sees glimmers of hope \u2014 the Tennessee judge who, after educating himself about the benefits of bupe, now allows it along with recovery housing for his addicted defendants. The Fairfax County, Va., jail that refers addicted inmates to a bupe program and provides counseling. But these are lonely outposts of progress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">If the addiction crisis is to end, we must create an infrastructure that works. It must be at least as compelling and accessible as the opioid production and distribution network. Those who die of drug overdose in the United States typically come close to dying nine times before the boulder irrevocably closes them off in their tombs. There are many opportunities to roll that stone away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">In July, Teva and Allergan joined the list of pharmaceutical companies agreeing to billion-dollar settlements for their roles in the overdose crisis. As opioid abatement and remediation funds trickle down to the states, this is the task that \u201cRaising Lazarus\u201d sets us. Who will join in rolling those rocks away?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\"><i>Nancy D. Campbell is the author of \u201c<\/i><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3ws3i5j\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose<\/i><\/a><i>.\u201d She is a professor of science and technology studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\"><b>Hope, Justice and the Future of America\u2019s Overdose Crisis<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Little, Brown. 400 pp. $30.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"b bt bc-offblack dn-ns hide-for-print\" data-testid=\"mostRead\" subscriptions-section=\"content\"\/><\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/2022\/08\/26\/good-criminals-who-help-treat-opioid-addicts\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] Comment on this story Comment In her 2018 bestseller, \u201cDopesick,\u201d Beth Macy presented a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-cj-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35181,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35179\/revisions\/35181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}