PROPaganda, Part 1 of 2

Addiction is, indeed, a terrible thing, and I am glad to see it being recognized, less stigmatized, and more genuine help offered to those struggling. But agenda-driven propaganda will not help those with addiction, in fact it has already been shown to cause harm to both addicts and chronic pain patients...

Williamson, West Virginia and the Opioid Crisis (Fake News Alert!)

Headline: 20.8 Million Pain Pills Flood Tiny Town in WV Let's talk about Williamson, West Virginia, the little town in Mingo County that has been featured in the news for the past several years as a sort of starting point for the opioid epidemic. According to sources, 20 million (give or take about 1 million)

An Open Letter to Dr. Andrew Kolodny

Update 6/27/18: I am overwhelmed by the positive responses I have received for this letter. I would ask that readers also take a look at all the articles and references cited in this piece, and share those as well. Those references go into much, much more detail and research than I have had space or

Prager University Review

   Originally written and posted on Quora, Dec. 19, 2017. See link. Prager University is an up-and-coming and presumably popular website that targets Millennials and touts freedom of thought and speech. The site is confusing a lot of people who think it is a real school (it's just a website), and folks are beginning to

The Truth About the Opioid Crisis

I’m resharing this article I wrote 3 years ago. 3 years and things have only gotten worse. The facts need to come out now, more than ever before. People are dying!

See also: An Open Letter to Dr. Kolodny, A Rock and a Hard Place, and Strangulation on Medicine

The Midwest Courier

Previously titled, “On Opioids: America’s Drug Addictions and the Wacky Laws that Perpetuate Them.”Two years ago, a little silver car sat parked outside our home. As the sun was going down an ambulance, police cruiser, and firetruck suddenly arrived to pull an unconscious young woman with a bobbing ponytail out from the driver side of the car. A bottle of heroin had been found next to her. I never saw that young woman again, and the police came to impound her car a few days later.

Last July, I sat in the small chapel at a local funeral home staring at the body of my husband’s cousin. Only 29 years old, living less than a mile from our house, married and a daddy-to-be, and there he lay in an open coffin looking sound asleep. After months of staying clean he had found a dealer in the apartment complex he…

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