Fortunately COVID-19 has not killed anyone in Jefferson County, but addiction sure has.  We don’t really need the CDC to validate those numbers. But they have: more young people have died of drug overdoses and suicides since this pandemic began than of COVID-19. For as long as I can remember that’s been the story in Port Townsend, too. People have been dying of drug overdoses, car crashes, or suicides, a reality that has only gotten worse and more pronounced.

Addiction comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. Those who get caught up in it don’t just hurt themselves, they destroy the lives of all around them. Children lose their parents, parents lose their children. There is more than enough misery to go around, so much suffering that it is often generational, this inheritance of grief, despair, and dysfunction that gets inflicted on the next generation.

It’s an invisible epidemic in the sense that nobody really wants to talk about it. Our local political leadership speaks in vague innuendos about “the homeless” or “mental health issues.” We all care so, so much about those protected classes but not enough to actually diagnose the problem properly and to name it for what it is. And certainly not enough to declare it the public health emergency it really is.

It’s a vicious cycle: our depressed economy, lack of good jobs, lack of housing, lack of political leadership, lack of opportunities, and a pro-drug culture make breaking the addiction cycle even more challenging. It’s a multi-faceted problem. Limited economic opportunities often lead people to resort to selling drugs.  An inability to find a future and hope in life often leads to using them.

Addicts are not victims. In fact, blaming everything but them probably helps fuel addiction, too. I am just saying it really is a community-wide disease, requiring a community-wide response, and one of the hardest things for me has been accepting that we just haven’t got the will or the desire to address it collectively. You can’t just blame individuals for their poor choices. We all create the fertile environment that produces these kinds of social issues. Addiction is a symptom; it is not the cause of the disease.

Politically, we often have a tendency to just make everything worse. We seem to diagnose the problem wrong, prescribe the wrong solution, and then throw open the barn doors. I watched Port Townsend become a hot spot for “homeless tourism.” Our leaders are full of compassion for these people, and yet give no thought whatsoever to the fact that our children here are somewhat vulnerable–either naive and sheltered, or at-risk youth–and that the professional homeless are not all just people pursuing an “alternative lifestyle,” but often, actual addicts who support themselves by selling meth and heroin.

The opioid epidemic, the sudden availability of insurance and healthcare, and the ease with which people could get either prescriptions or street drugs also fueled the problem.

I was really sad and yet so very grateful when the Boiler Room saw fit to shut itself down. I watched heroin and meth sweep through this town and I watched young person after young person get caught up in it.

There is help available. There are people who care. We have drug courts and treatment options and a thriving recovery community. But we don’t have a collective community-wide response, a strong political will, and a willingness to name this epidemic for what it is and to say “no.” Not another life.

I have a sister out there on the streets using, a daughter in recovery, and a good 40 years of just watching friend after friend play the revolving-door-game-of addiction, the hospital, jail, and all those 2 am phone calls until one day they just weren’t there anymore. But what I really have is this simmering rage, this deep seated resentment towards a community that cares more about it’s political ideologies than it does about its people, and this keen awareness that no, not all lives matter at all.