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The Two Simple Edicts of Successful Addiction Treatment [nytimes.com]

 

By Beth Macy, Illustration: Celia Jacobs, The New York Times, August 15, 2022

On a chilly spring evening in 2021, Tim Nolan set up a portable addiction clinic next to a McDonald’s dumpster, and he waited. His desk was the dashboard of his gray Prius, his office this parking lot, which smelled like frying oil and trash. The hatchback of the nurse practitioner’s car was full of hepatitis C testing kits, clean needles, fentanyl test strips — and pizzas.

Mr. Nolan’s first appointment of the night was with a middle-aged factory worker named Sammy, who showed up late in a dented old Ford and high on heroin, a broken face mask dangling from one ear. “I’m ready to get off that damn needle,” Sammy told him.

“Why do you want to?” Mr. Nolan asked, gently.

Sammy’s eyes welled. “Sorry, man,” he said. He’d been imprisoned twice, he explained, most recently on drug-related charges. While incarcerated, Sammy faced an additional charge for assaulting a jail guard during what appeared to be a full-blown psychotic episode that Sammy blamed on abrupt withdrawal. A year earlier, his fiancée’s 18-year-old son was killed. He’d just been fired from his job driving a forklift following a fight.

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Richard and Kelly,

When hitting a paywall, with most publications you can sign up for free and then be able to read up to three stories a month. Yes, they are wanting to get you as a subscriber. And no, PACEs Connection isn't connected in any way to the publications other than posting; we don't receive any compensation from publications for posting. But you can sign up, read the article, and then opt out of emails from most publications pretty easily.

I believe, too, that if you search for the article on the Internet, in many cases you can access it without going through the signup process. It is different for different publications, but I believe the NYTimes will give access for articles that are searched for.

This was a terrific article. Beth Macy is an amazing writer with deep knowledge of this topic. The Hulu original series, "Dopesick", based on her book by the same title, is very well done and I highly recommend it. Michael Keaton gives what should be an award-winning performance as a country doctor who knows first hand the insidiousness of opioids. The relentless marketing of the drugs, and the many people working to bring them to some degree of justice, is also well done.

I'll bring up the topic of posting stories with paywalls at our next staff meeting.

Thank you!



Carey

Last edited by Carey Sipp
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