LESSONS FROM THE EPICENTER. MY "RECOVERY" FROM BATTLING THE OPIOID CRISIS. And how you can do better.
by Jonathan Willis For a long time, Montgomery County, Ohio carried a grim title—the worst place in the nation for opioid-related deaths. That wasn’t just a headline for me. That was my backyard. That was where I spent my career responding to calls that, more often than not, ended in heartbreak. Over my years on the job, I responded to well over a thousand overdoses. WELL over a thousand. (I've tried to do the math and stopped) When I say that out loud, it barely seems possible. But every one of those calls was real—a kitchen floor, a gas station bathroom, a home with a room filled with bodies, a car that "randomly" rolled out of a parking lot into the middle of the street. I saw addiction, and accidental poisoning, and overdoses tear through families in every way imaginable. Parents burying children. Children burying parents. Siblings trying to make sense of it all. For years, I told myself I was unaffected. I wore the armor, kept my tone dry, brushed off the weight of i...