Reading a book on addiction recovery is not as daunting as recovery itself, but it can be a difficult task for numerous reasons... Read the Full Story >>
substance use disorder
Substance-Use Disorder & Person-First Language: Why It Matters
How we perceive and treat people with substance-use disorder has a direct impact on access to treatment and long-term recovery for this community. The language we use to identify this disease is crucial in addressing solutions for people experiencing it. Read the Full Story >>
The Distance Between, by Timothy J. Hillegonds
As I read Timothy J. Hillegonds’ harrowing memoir of addiction and youthful rage, The Distance Between (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), I was reminded of a sentence written by one of my favorite fiction authors, Richard Lange: “We can only, all of us, run so far before what we really are and what is meant to be catch up to us.” Read the Full Story >>
A Deep-Dive Into Anger, Abuse, and Resurrection with Debut Author Timothy J. Hillegonds
A Chicago native, author Timothy J. Hillegonds stepped foot in Shepherdstown for the first time in 2012, and found himself smitten from the start. Seven years later, he readily calls Shepherdstown his second home, and by getting to know West Virginia’s oldest town as intimately as he has, he’s also become familiar with the Mountain State’s unfortunate connection to the nationwide opioid epidemic. Read the Full Story >>
Finally: A Comprehensive Program for Substance Abuse in the Panhandle
Mountaineer Recovery Center, targeted to open in September 2019, will be the first in the state of West Virginia to provide this level of treatment, according to someone’s needs all in one place. Read the Full Story >>
Drug Take Back Day Gets an Upgrade in Shepherdstown
Across the U.S. every year, National Prescription Drug Take Back Day lands in cities and towns with the goal of providing a safe, convenient, and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse of medications. Read the Full Story >>
America’s Opioid Killing Fields
Award-winning journalist Beth Macy’s Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America comes as a timely, in-depth look at America’s opioid crisis that tells the stories of its victims and traces the social and economic roots of the epidemic. Read the Full Story >>
Partnership in Martinsburg Adds Strength to Opioid Fight
The Martinsburg Initiative (TMI) is an innovative, multi-dimensional partnership that has developed a model solution to the crisis of Opioid Use Disorder and the general problems of other substance use, misuse, and substance use disorders. Read the Full Story >>
National Organization Arrives in Panhandle to Confront Opioid Epidemic
Established after the 2016 presidential election, The One America Movement’s (One America) mission is to build bridges and solve problems by bringing Americans together across racial, religious, political, and geographic divides in order to address pressing social problems like poverty, opioids, racial tension, and more. Read the Full Story >>
Appalachian Must-Reads
Thomas E. Douglass brings Grubb back from literary oblivion in his comprehensive biography Voice of Glory: The Life and Work of Davis Grubb. The Moundsville-born Grubb occupied a distinctive place in American letters primarily during the ‘50s and ‘60s, and in a career that comprised ten novels and numerous short stories, he garnered acclaim only to be forgotten in recent years. Read the Full Story >>
I Lost My Brother to Mr. Brown
Mike Chalmers is a consulting editor and former editor-in-chief (2016-2020) for The Observer. — If we’re going to truly address the addiction epidemic, we’ve got to be brutally honest about it. I’ll go first. When we took over at the new Observer, we knew we wanted to place ourselves firmly within the emerging conversation surrounding Read the Full Story >>