One of the oddities of being a reporter is, we meet a lot of people but never in times they’d call normal.
We are there for highlights—the championships, graduations or big breaks in a career. But, often, we are there for what is the darkest moment in a life—the death of a child, the loved one fighting cancer.
The nature of this job is to ask people to relive and retell these moments. It’s never easy, but it’s worse when you start to see the same story over and over again.
A lot of these stories, particularly in Hamilton, have revolved around drug abuse and addiction. As editor of the Hamilton Post, I’ve written about addiction more than any single issue, and it’s not even close. While I have some latitude on which subjects I cover, I am bound to the issues facing the community. And addiction, it seems, is a big one.
The most exasperating aspect of covering addiction is seeing how the stigma around it hamstrings the ability to fight addiction itself. This stigma gives the people and the families fighting addiction a very strong incentive to keep the struggle secret, folded up and hidden from the world. And this leads to isolation, the feeling they’ve failed in some way.
This stigma shows up even after addiction has claimed a life. Take a look at the obituary of anyone under 30; if there isn’t a cause of death listed, there’s a solid chance substance abuse at least contributed to it. I’ve heard several families justify this omission by saying they wanted to remember their loved one “the way they were,” as if the addiction never existed. It is understandable, but also oversimplifying a complex life.
Early last month, I saw an obituary of a young man that dared to buck this trend. It simply said this person died unexpectedly “at the age of 24, after fighting the demon of addiction for many years.”
Then it went on to describe him as “smart, funny, confident, athletic, talented and thoughtful…He loved playing his drums and playing with his band…He loved to play golf and basketball and work out at the gym.”
It was an incredibly powerful statement: “Yes, addiction took his life, but it was not the only thing to define it.”
Addiction is much more common than we think it is, and it isn’t affecting the kind of people we expect it is. According to nonprofit Facing Addiction, addiction affects one in three American households.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse said, in 2013, 6.5 million Americans aged 12 or older had used prescription drugs non-medically in the past month, and health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for opioid pain medications in 2012, enough for every American adult to have a bottle. According to the White House, four in five heroin users started out by misusing prescription opioid pain medications. This is an important point. Often, addiction starts after a surgery or medical procedure when the patient does as the doctor orders but then finds he can’t stop using the pills. It’s not because of a character defect.
In a November campaign speech that has since gone viral, Gov. Chris Christie discussed why he thought we needed to change how we address and treat addiction in America. He used a close friend from law school as an example. This friend had graduated from an Ivy League school and Seton Hall Law. He was editor of the law review, the first of Christie’s friends to get a job out of school and the first to make partner at a law firm. He had a wife and three daughters, and they lived together in a nice house. Christie said he and his friends “loved him but we hated him because the guy had everything.”
This friend hurt his back while running one day, and his doctor prescribed him Percocet, an opioid painkiller, to numb the pain. A year later, he was addicted.
During the next decade, Christie’s friend went in and out of rehab. His wife divorced him. His lost the right to see his children. He lost his home and his law and driver’s licenses. He bought a condo, but lost that, too. He spent all his savings.
A year-and-a-half ago, he died of an overdose, at age 52. He was found in a motel room with a bottle of Percocet and a quart of vodka, Christie said.
“By every measure that we define success in this country, this guy had it,” the governor said. “Great-looking guy. Well educated. Great career. Plenty of money. Beautiful, loving wife. Beautiful children. Great house. He had everything. He’s a drug addict, and he couldn’t get help, and he’s dead. And when I sat there as the governor of New Jersey at his funeral and looked across the pew at his three daughters sobbing because their dad is gone, there but for the grace of God go I. It can happen to anyone. And so we need to start treating people in this country, not jailing them. We need to give them the tools they need to recover because every life is precious, every life is an individual gift from God. And we have to stop judging.”
On the other side of the political spectrum is Director of National Drug Control Michael Botticelli, a recent appointee of President Obama’s. Botticelli’s position has often been referred to as “the drug czar,” but Botticelli bristles at the title. He has signaled he will stray from the zero-tolerance stance traditionally held by those in his position, instead choosing to use empathy and treatment to attack the nation’s drug problem.
Botticelli said as much in an appearace at a rally organized by Facing Addiction in October on the National Mall.
“We must choose to come out in the light and be treated with dignity and respect,” Botticelli said, according to a 60 Minutes report. “So let’s stop whispering about this disease.”
This is one of the few issues where members of both political parties have begun to agree. And, as hard as that path has been, it’s still the easiest part. Now, we have the more difficult task of changing our actions and attitudes.
If you think this issue doesn’t affect you, well, consider this: Odds are you know someone dealing with addiction, you just might not know it.
And the problem won’t be fixed until we stop seeing these kinds of stories in the newspaper—not because reporters have decided to stop writing about the issue but because there are no more cases to cover.
It’s a far-fetched dream, but here’s hoping that we start catching more and more people on the good days.
