Anyone who’s lived in a rural community knows that talking about substance abuse can be nearly as hard as treating it. On federal fact sheets, addicts and overdose victims are faceless statistics; in small towns, they’re friends, neighbors, children, parents. Our criminal justice systems treat addiction like a moral failing, while our healthcare systems neglect its cultural and socioeconomic roots. We continue to stigmatize substance abuse, even as the ongoing heroin epidemic ravages suburbs and rural towns across the county.
This month, “Small Towns, Big Change” is staring addiction in the face, and daring to imagine how to treat it. In our latest package of stories, you’ll encounter a broad array of solutions to the daunting problem of substance abuse, including a data-sharing network that helps prevent recently released prisoners from ODing; a prospective needle exchange program in southern Colorado; and a clinic in remote Questa that’s combining medical treatment with group therapy. “I’ve never wanted to help myself as much as I want to now,” one painkiller addict tells reporter J.R. Logan in the latter story. “This is my sanctuary. This is where I feel safe.”
We should warn you that you’ll read nearly as many stories about struggle as about success. Look at Rio Arriba County, where a litany of innovative treatments haven’t changed the conditions of poverty that underpin addiction, or at the San Luis Valley, where a crackdown on painkillers has led to a rise in heroin. Although there are no quick fixes to beating addiction, analyzing failure can be as instructive as celebrating success. In place of easy answers, then, we offer stories about incremental progress, nascent ideas, and people who will do anything to stay sober, alive, and free.
Read all the stories:
- Inside a small-town addict’s struggle to get clean
- What New Mexico can learn from New Jersey’s approach to health data
- Española has tried everything to stop drug overdoses
- A community curbs pain pill abuse, but heroin addiction grows
- The San Luis Valley’s controversial needle exchange idea
- How a police chief used compassion to combat his community’s drug problem
- The rural county trying to find its high-risk drug users before it’s too late
- How to get a drug treatment that works into every medicine cabinet
Ben Goldfarb
Solutions Journalism Network
If you want to participate in the Small Towns, Big Change reporting project, or have a story to share about substance use and possible solutions, text “Hello” to 505–705–8146. You’ll be invited to share some thoughts about how substance abuse has affected you, and about what solutions you think are possible. It’s all anonymous.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
