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Kate O'Neill
In “Hooked: Stories and Solutions from Vermont’s Opioid Crisis,” writer Kate O’Neill explores the state’s opioid epidemic and efforts to address it using traditional journalism, narrative storytelling and her own experiences. Her sister, Madelyn Linsenmeir, died in October 2018 after years battling opioid addiction.
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Hooked: A Love Story From Vermont's Opioid Crisis
Writer Kate O'Neill reflects on what she's learned since her sister Madelyn Linsenmeir's death in October 2018. "Since my sister died," she writes in the final installment of her yearlong series, "I've been asked over and over what people can do to help others with opioid-use disorder. A year ago I didn't have an answer. Now I have many."
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What's Best for the Children of Vermonters With Opioid-Use Disorder?
What’s best for the children of Vermonters with opioid-use disorder? In the Green Mountain State, heart-wrenching decisions about custody and parental rights often fall to the Department of Children and Families. In 2016 its lawyers terminated the rights of parents to their babies and toddlers at a higher rate than any other state in the nation — except Oklahoma. In the fifth episode of the “Hooked” series, Kate O’Neill explains how the overburdened, under- resourced system works. She also reveals many of the ways it doesn’t, by inadvertently punishing parents, especially for poor ones, who are trying to keep or regain custody of their kids.
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How Far Along? How Vermont Delivers Help for Pregnant Women With Opioid-Use Disorder
Stigma is the biggest barrier between pregnant women with opioid-use disorder and prenatal care. The No. 1 fear of those moms-to-be in Vermont? That the Department of Children and Families might take their babies.
In this installment of Hooked, her yearlong series exploring Vermont’s opioid epidemic, staff writer Kate O’Neill navigates the programs and processes for women giving birth while addicted. Vermont has five times more opioid-exposed newborns than the national average, but that may because of improved access to treatment in the state.
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Between a 'Hub' and a Hard Place: Three Stories of Opioid Addiction in Rural Vermont
In rural Vermont, people with opioid-use disorder face unique obstacles to recovery, including lack of services, geographical barriers and small-town stigmatization. Addiction both flourishes in isolation and creates it. In the third installment of "Hooked," her yearlong series exploring Vermont’s opioid epidemic, staff writer Kate O'Neill shares stories of addiction and recovery from three isolated communities: In Enosburg, she found Sierra LaCoste, for whom buying drugs on the streets was easier than getting to a clinic for daily treatment; from their home in Goshen, Dave and Jan Bishop of Goshen spend their days driving Addison County addicts to Burlington and Rutland; And in Windham County, the residents of Wilmington are trying to make their town a place where people who are struggling with addiction can find help — and love.
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Trafficked: How the Opioid Epidemic Drives Sexual Exploitation in Vermont
“I thought sex trafficking was something that happened to people in other countries or to women who were brought to this country to work in massage parlors,” writes Kate O’Neill. “I had no idea it was something that could happen to my sister.” O’Neill explores the intersection of opioid addiction and sexual exploitation in Vermont as part of her yearlong series "Hooked: Stories and Solutions from Vermont's Opioid Crisis.” Later this month, a man who allegedly sold drugs and prostituted women is expected to be the first sex trafficking defendant to face a Green Mountain jury.
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Timeline: Vermont Opioid Crisis
Hundreds of Vermonters have died from opioid overdoses in the past quarter century. Eight thousand are currently in treatment for opioid-use disorder. Countless more live every day with the despair of this disease. How did we get here? No single event sparked Vermont’s current emergency, but its momentum was building for more than a decade before then-governor Peter Shumlin named it a “full-blown heroin crisis" in his State of the State address. From the invention of OxyContin to a single night last month when the University of Vermont Medical Center treated seven overdosing patients, our timeline tracks the epidemic in Vermont.
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Hooked: How So Many Vermonters Got Addicted to Opioids
Why are so many people addicted to heroin in Vermont? Kate O'Neill weaves together memories of her late sister, Madelyn Linsenmeir, and conversations with Maddie’s friend Katie Counter as she reports on the history of the state’s opioid epidemic.
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Opioid Addiction: A Glossary of Common Terms
This abridged Addictionary™ was adapted and used with permission from the Research Recovery Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical…
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