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)Continue

Going Home for Christmas to Coal Mining Country

See more “misty mountain” photos from my trip here   These communities rely almost solely on the dying coal industry that operates mines in the Appalachia mountains throughout Kentucky, Southern Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Not only do these areas struggle with economic depression, and an aging population, the heroin epidemic has hit these communitiesContinue

A Rock and a Hard Place: Pain Patients Suffer from Heroin Laws Fallout

See also: An Open Letter to Dr. Kolodny, The Truth About the Opioid Crisis, and Strangulation on Medicine Good, law-abiding people are suffering severely in the fallout from recent state and federal laws. Designed to curb heroin addiction, these laws and prevailing societal views all begin with the false assumption that prescription pain pills likeContinue

On Opioids, One Year After DEA Reforms

It’s been nearly one year since my researched article on the heroin epidemic (link) in my city, and I’ve been keeping tabs on the results of the DEA’s new prescription opioid reforms. How have things have panned out for pain patients, and opioid and heroin addicts in the past year? Two years ago, National PainContinue

The Truth About the Opioid Crisis

*This article was originally written in 2015. It has since been updated with new, groundbreaking information and facts. Previously titled, “On Opioids: America’s Drug Addictions and the Wacky Laws that Perpetuate Them.” See also: PROPaganda: Part 1 and Part 2; An Open Letter to Dr. Kolodny; A Rock and a Hard Place; and Strangulation onContinue