America's opioid addiction: 'I ended up selling all my valuable stuff to buy pills'

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/09/opioid-addiction-appalachia-tennessee
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On the outskirts of Kingsport, Tennessee, Kim, a therapist, faces a small group of people sitting in folding chairs. She’s helping them rid their life of illegal drugs.

The attendees are all white and working class, self-described “dirt poor”, and none with college degrees. They have come to spend hours talking of past and present pains, offer each other support, and pee in a cup. If they pass the test, they will get their weekly prescription of Suboxone, an FDA-approved narcotic for opioid addiction treatment. Or as it is called on the streets, “fake heroin”.

Kim, the therapist, hears the stories of pain and suffering from her patients daily. She herself has experienced it. Born and raised in Kingsport, she had a long run with drugs, but is now 14 years free of them. “There is just such great despair and hopelessness here,” she says. “With the coal mines closing, middle managers laid off from the plants, we have new economic despair. Folks who have little, and little offered to them. It’s a breeding ground for addiction.”

The public health response has been as slow as the dealers’ response has been quick. Whereas other places have responded by giving out clean needles or rolling out supervised injection facilities, in central Appalachia they have mostly given out scoldings and bibles. The vastly underfunded treatment centers available are mostly built around the premise of addiction as a moral failing, solved via abstinence and salvation...The good companies that were here when I grew up – Raytheon, Univac – are gone. Now everyone is scared with little stability. Community is also gone. Everyone is hard to each other, and kindness is now considered a weakness.”

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Someone is getting filthy rich from those poppies from Afghanistan.