America’s Opioid Epidemic: We Dig in with Kelly McEvers
Who’s game for a discussion about addiction?
It might seem like a hard sell, but on September 1 in Atlanta, NPR Generation Listen filled an intimate space at The Loft in Midtown with young listeners looking to get real about opioids, addiction and the many ways America’s Opioid Epidemic has impacted our personal, professional and collective lives.
True to our Listening Party model, we curated a powerful piece by NPR’s always inspiring Kelly McEvers.
Last year, Kelly went to Indiana to report for her podcast, Embedded, a project that takes a story from the news and goes deep. There was a headline that had been catching her eye for sometime: a surprising HIV outbreak with no sign of slowing down. She and her producer, Tom Dreisbach, headed to Austin, Indiana to find out what was going and meet the people this story was actually affecting.
What did they find at the heart of the story? Addiction. To opioids. An epidemic that was ravishing a community and leading straight to the HIV crisis she’s been reading about. From this reporting trip, Kelly and her team created the very first episode of Embedded: The House.
A year later, Kelly and Tom went back to Indiana to follow up with the people they’d met. Had they been able to move forward with their lives? Had they been able to overcome their addiction? Kelly and Tom were able to find Joy, a nurse we meet in Episode One. The last we’d heard from her, she’d had an appointment with an addiction doctor scheduled. But would she keep it?
After talking for multiple hours in a rental car outside of Joy’s parents’ house, Kelly and Tom captured a deeply moving, powerful story about a woman struggling to beat her addiction and move towards recovery.
Joy’s story lay at the heart of our Listening Party.
After 22 riveting minutes of shared listening, Kelly kicked off the conversation with some questions for special guest Maia Szalavitz, author of a new book about addiction, Unbroken Brain, and a former addict herself.
She asked: Which parts of Joy’s story further stereotypes we have about people with addiction? Which parts challenge regular assumptions that we make? We seem to treat addiction differently from other illnesses: why and how does this play out practically? What is harm reduction all about? Who is most at risk for addiction in the first place?
We soon transitioned to the heart of the evening: the interactive conversation with our audience. Engaged, thoughtful and vulnerable, our inspiring and bright attendees opened up about their own experiences with addiction, about navigating the addiction of loved ones, and about committing their professional lives to thinking through systemic shifts that could change our cultural narrative about addiction and help offer relief to the thousands of American’s – of all ages and backgrounds – struggling to free themselves from its grasp. From the personal to the policy-based, questions and reflections we heard created a sense of hope about the future.
Two key questions surfaced from our discussion:
Why does it require a secondary result – like HIV, Hepatitis C, or a rise in crime – to make us (and policy makers) care about people suffering with addiction? Why isn’t it enough to acknowledge that addiction is an illness and there are proven ways to help treat this illness?
What can we – as Millennials, as active social media users, and as a people who care about helping people with addiction – do to change the narrative?
We explored all kinds of ways to poke at these questions, but a central idea took shape: we should seek out and share stories that show people with addiction as … people. We should seek out and share stories told in ways the allow those without first-hand experience to relate more empathically to the universally human struggles and triggers that lead those more susceptible towards addiction. We should try to chose empathy, support and community over shame. And of course, acknowledge that this conversation is a work in progress and needs to extend beyond our intimate gathering. Everyone took a moment to jot down something that had surprised them or changed their mind on a Reflection Card – something they could go and share with someone else in their lives who hasn’t joined our discussion.
And we invite you to join this discussion, too. Listen to We Found Joy or look out for our Host Your Own Kit for America’s Opioid Epidemic towards the end of September.
Generation Listen: America's Opioid Epidemic is made possible by Cigna, and by a collaboration between NPR and NPR Member stations WABE and GPB, in Atlanta, and WBEZ in Chicago.
