Best-selling author Beth Macy led a discussion on the continuing opioid crisis – and some innovative ways that communities are finding to combat it – at the Historic Masonic Theatre in Clifton Forge on Monday.
“The opioid crisis is really festering and growing still,” Macy said. “The numbers are going up every time they count them. And I think of it as the scourge that takes advantage of long-standing fissures in American society.”
She was joined by Ann Gardner, commonwealth’s attorney for Alleghany County and an advocate for drug courts; Ingrid Barber, executive director of the Alleghany Highlands Community Services Board; and Lee Higginbotham, CEO of LewisGale Hospital Alleghany.
More than 180 people pre-registered for the discussion, according to Gayle Hillert, president of the board of the Masonic Theatre Preservation Foundation. It was the first event of 2023 for the Cardinal News Speaker Series.
Macy told the crowd that her interest in the opioid epidemic took root while working as a journalist at The Roanoke Times, where she worked for a quarter-century. That reporting evolved into her 2018 book “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America.” She served as a writer on the Hulu series by the same name, which was loosely based on her book.
After writing “Dopesick,” Macy said she felt distraught by the suffering she had witnessed. She didn’t want to ever write about addiction again. “My husband wanted me to write a cookbook,” she said.
But as she traveled the country discussing “Dopesick,” she started to hear about innovative approaches people were taking, in cities and rural areas alike, to help individuals addicted to opioids. Macy also knew that money from national settlements with opioid manufacturers was about to start trickling down to communities.
“My concern was that I didn’t want the money to be wasted on the same old, same old methods of care that weren’t working,” she says.
From that grew her follow-up book, “Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis,” which came out last year.
Macy spoke of how patients who had come to the emergency room at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital for opioid–related infections, withdrawal and overdoses previously would have been given a list of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings and sent on their way. Today, people who go to that same emergency room for those issues can be treated with buprenorphine, which helps them manage withdrawal symptoms, and connected with an office-based opioid treatment program. They’re also connected with peer counselors, people in recovery who have been trained to offer support.
“I call the peers my rowdy angels. They are very much like the soul of this new book,” Macy said. “These are people who are working with the least of us in tent encampments and under bridges trying to help people.”
Macy described efforts in Kentucky to ensure that people leaving jail didn’t relapse. She talked of advocates in North Carolina who are making sure people with opioid-use disorder have clean needles, as well as food and medical care.
Policies set during the U.S. war on drugs, which began in the 1970s, taught Americans to see people who are addicted to drugs as bad, Macy argued.
“But you know what? They’re just people,” she said. “Some of them do bad things. Some of them don’t.”
Barber spoke about how the Alleghany Highlands Community Services Board had only limited services for people with substance use problems when she first began working there 14 years ago. Today people can go from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. during the week and be assessed for which services they need. The board also offers peer counseling and intensive outpatient treatment.
“I will tell you that sometimes it takes several attempts for people to get comfortable or to complete the program,” Barber said. “Some people do not complete the program, but we’re never going to close the door on anybody.”
Higginbotham spoke about how LewisGale Hospital Alleghany has worked to address the opioid crisis, noting the hospital’s annual “Crush the Crisis” opioid take-back day, when members of the community can anonymously dispose of unused or expired prescription medications. Gardner spoke about the 2020 creation of the county’s drug treatment court, where a multi-disciplinary team including judges, attorneys and behavioral health treatment professionals work to address nonviolent criminal offenses by people with substance-use issues.
After the panel discussion, audience members asked questions and shared their thoughts.
“We are talking about it being a disease,” Terri Brockly of Botetourt County said of opioid-use disorder. “So alcoholism is a disease, but abstinence from alcohol and a 12-step program is what helps those people.”
She questioned why people require medication to stop using opioids.
“I totally hear you,” Macy answered. “It is ironic, and yet if you’re a person with diabetes and you have to take insulin, you wouldn’t say, ‘Sorry, you can’t do it, because we don’t think that’s right.’”
Jenn Boowen of Bedford County stepped to the microphone and told the audience that she had used drugs every day for years and had overdosed twice. Medication-assisted treatment helped her get clean, she said.
“It saved my life,” she said. “It literally saved my life.”