This week, people with mental health challenges or substance use disorder often end up in jail. But crisis response teams offer another way. Also, one year after the Mountain Valley Pipeline went into service, people who live directly in the pipeline’s path have received compensation. But not everyone. And, the Sacred Harp songbook gets an update for the first time since the early 1990s.
America has faced a pandemic, a polarizing election and racial equity battles in the past year. But there’s been another crisis continuing to fester — the opioid epidemic. Deaths are up with more than 1,200 West Virginians dying from overdoses last year. The fight for sobriety now deals with its own tragic divide — When is someone sober?
The road to recovery comes in many forms. For some abstinence works. But others, especially those addicted to opiates, find they need help to get off of such powerful drugs. For their recovery they turn to medication-assisted treatment. That approach has split the treatment world and created a stigma around sobriety.
This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, the CRC Foundation and the West Virginia Humanities Council.
Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher and beyond. You also can listen to Us & Them on WVPB Radio — tune in tonight, June 24, at 8 p.m., or listen to the encore presentation on the following Saturday at 3 p.m.
Trey Kay
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The Clarksburg Mission is a Christian-centered treatment facility located in Clarksburg, W.Va. that supports people in either abstinence-based or medication assisted substance use disorder recovery.
Trey Kay
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The neon cross outside the Clarksburg Mission delivers a simple, straightforward message as to the spiritual underpinnings of their recovery program.
Trey Kay
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Lou Ortenzio is executive director of the Clarksburg Mission, Clarksburg, W.Va.
Trey Kay
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Melissa Carter is recovery coach here at the Clarksburg Mission in Clarksburg, W.Va.
Trey Kay
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Angela Knight is a program manager at the Clarksburg Mission, Clarksburg, W. Va.
Jennifer Shephard/Jennifer Shephard
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West Virginia University
Dr. James Berry, Director of WVU Medicine’s Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship
Gabriella Dahalia-Jarrett
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Gabriella Dahalia-Jarrett with her “murphing” dog Sid.
This week, people with mental health challenges or substance use disorder often end up in jail. But crisis response teams offer another way. Also, one year after the Mountain Valley Pipeline went into service, people who live directly in the pipeline’s path have received compensation. But not everyone. And, the Sacred Harp songbook gets an update for the first time since the early 1990s.
An annual summertime staple for West Virginia, the Charleston Sternwheel Regatta will return to Kanawha County this weekend with events running from Thursday, July 3 to Sunday, July 6.
July 4 is nearly upon us, and soon firework displays will light up the night sky across West Virginia. Fireworks can be an opportunity for family fun, but medical and fire prevention officials urge residents to use caution.
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Rita Crisafi
