Backstory: The ‘Saddest Update’ on an Opioid-Addicted Source 

click to enlarge

• File: James Buck
• Drug testing strips at Howard Center Safe Recovery

This "backstory" is a part of a collection of articles that describes some of the obstacles that Seven Days reporters faced while pursuing Vermont news, events and people in 2023.

I felt myself rooting for Kelly almost immediately.

I was writing about Vermont's drug crisis, and Kelly had agreed to be interviewed as long as we withheld her last name, since her family wasn't aware of the extent of her recent drug use.

She described how, during a stretch of sobriety some years ago, she had built a life of which she was proud, with a house, a marriage and a job as a recovery coach. "I've tasted it," she said of a life without drugs. "I had confidence. I loved who I was. I held my head up high."

But addiction took it all away. After another relapse last summer, Kelly, 38, ended up homeless, shooting up in Burlington's City Hall Park and racking up a slew of retail theft charges that landed her in prison. She had been released the day before our interview.

Related Vermont's Relapse: Efforts to Address Opioid Addiction Were Starting to Work. Then Potent New Street Drugs Arrived.

Vermont's Relapse: Efforts to Address Opioid Addiction Were Starting to Work. Then Potent New Street Drugs Arrived.

By Colin Flanders

Opioids

About halfway through the hour-long conversation, I sensed she was weighing whether to reveal something to me. She grew quiet, then said she had met up with her boyfriend the previous day, even though she knew it would not be a good idea: He was camping outside and actively using. She thought she could resist the temptation, but she was wrong. She used again, the first time in months, and woke up hours later to find a needle still in her arm.

She was ashamed and angry at herself, she said, and planned to avoid using again. "I want my dignity back," she said through tears. We exchanged numbers and vowed to keep in touch.

The story ran a couple of weeks later and garnered a lot of thoughtful feedback, including from readers who expressed heartache over Kelly's experience. I wondered what she thought about it, but calls to her cellphone went unanswered. I found myself walking through City Hall Park whenever I was downtown so that I could scan the crowd for her face.

One afternoon in August, while rushing to an interview, I thought I saw her huddled in a corner of City Hall Park under a large blanket near a couple of police officers. I returned to the park about an hour later to see if I could find her, but the woman was gone.

I later learned it couldn't have been her because, several days after the story ran, Kelly died, succumbing to an infection linked to drug use.

Looking back on our interview, I was struck by her comments about why she agreed to speak with me. At a time when the negative effects of drug use were being felt more in the community, she hoped that her story might help remind readers that drug users are people, too.

Addiction has no boundaries, she told me. "It doesn't care how well educated you are," she said. "It doesn't care how good of a family you come from. It doesn't care what you do for work, what color you are or how nice you are. That doesn't matter.

"At the end of the day, we all die the same."