Vermont Public Radio partnered with Writers for Recovery for this six-part series featuring conversation about addiction and original writing from the recovery community around Vermont.
Writers for Recovery runs writing workshops for people recovering from substance use disorder. When they approached VPR with an idea to produce intimate interviews with members of Vermont’s recovery community, we knew it was an opportunity to deepen our ongoing coverage of the opioid crisis, and elevate the voices of some of the people whose lives have been most transformed.
In this edited overview (which begins with an excerpt of our series trailer), we meet, among others, a woman who eloquently deconstructs the mechanics of her addiction; a mother who watched the school system fail her son and set him on a fatal path, a father whose experience with generational alcoholism prepared him to deal with his daughters’ opioid use; and a sister who is telling her dead sibling’s story in an effort to replace widespread stigma with compassion and solidarity. Her words ring out across the series: "We're not alone. People who have this addiction, and people who love people who have this addiction — we're not alone."
