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‘Demon Copperhead’ Author Lays Foundation for Women in Appalachia To Beat Addiction
This article was originally published by KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues.
On a Saturday evening in June, people of Pennington Gap, Virginia, gathered at the historic Lee Theatre to celebrate the founding of Higher Ground Women’s Recovery Residence.
Author Barbara Kingsolver opened the facility in January with royalties from her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Demon Copperhead, whose plot revolves around Appalachia’s opioid crisis. The home offers a supportive place for people to stay while learning to live without drugs. Kingsolver had asked the women now living there to join her on stage.
Kingsolver, who grew up in Appalachia, suggested the women share with the audience what they were most proud of having gained from their first weeks at Higher Ground. But she learned they were more eager to brag on one another.
Supporters say Higher Ground provides stability and a reentry point after leaving jail, prison, or a treatment center. It offers a range of services and support in an area devastated by addiction to painkilling pills and other types of opioids. Most fundamentally, it’s a true home, with one- and two-person bedrooms, a communal kitchen and a den. Residents say they have found affirmation from a cohort of women who understand how addiction can demoralize a person and estrange them from family and community.
Residents Syara Parsell (left) and Ronda Morgan have found much-needed stability at Higher Ground recovery house. Credit: Taylor Sisk for KFF Health News.
Ronda Morgan, a resident, said her family has always been in her corner. But while she was serving a jail sentence for drug possession, she told herself, “I’m sick of them having to do time with me.” She was ready for recovery. Her daughter, who’s a nurse, told her about Higher Ground, the first facility of its kind in sprawling, rural Lee County. Morgan learned she could live there for up to two years to gain the footing that had eluded her in three-plus decades of addiction.
What she didn’t anticipate was the kinship she has forged with her housemates — among them, Syara Parsell — and with Higher Ground’s staff.
Parsell, 35, one of Higher Ground’s first residents, said that in her time there she’s received help finding employment and enrolling in community college courses.
From the staff and Kingsolver, Parsell said, she has received judgment-free support. “Together,” she said, “we figure it out.”
Traditional treatment facilities typically operate under highly structured medical supervision. Recovery houses, like Higher Ground, offer a more relaxed environment, helping move a resident “toward being an independent, fully functional, self-reliant human being,” said Marvin Ventrell, CEO of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers.
“Recovery occurs in the community,” he said. But reentry must be approached delicately. “When addiction occurs with a human being, it also occurs within a family social structure.” If a person in early recovery returns to a family that’s unprepared, that person’s chances of success “are severely diminished.”
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For Kingsolver, the opioid crisis became a focal point for what she hoped would be “the great Appalachian novel.” The epidemic “has changed so much of the texture of this place,” devastating families and communities.
Pharmaceutical companies targeted central Appalachia for sales of what they falsely claimed were addiction-resistant prescription opioids. Kingsolver wanted to “cast my net back over all of the extractive industries that have come to this place, taken out what was good, and left behind a mess.”
“The way I put it is, ‘They came to harvest our pain when there was nothing else left,’” she said.
In research for Demon Copperhead, she immersed herself in the stories of people who’ve navigated addiction and those who care and advocate for them.
The novel has been an enormous success, having sold more than 3 million copies and earning far more than her previous works. Kingsolver decided to dedicate hundreds of thousands of dollars to address the crisis that has overwhelmed the region where she was raised — and to which she returned full time in 2004.
Again, she set about listening. Drawing on a wide range of expertise, she determined that a women’s recovery home was the wisest investment.
Joie Cantrell works as a public health nurse in harm reduction for the Virginia Department of Health, supporting policies and practices to curb the negative effects of drug use, and serves as Higher Ground’s board chair. She had long recognized the need for just such a home.
“That was the part that was missing,” Cantrell said. Too often, when someone would come out of a treatment facility or incarceration, “we lost them. They fell back into the same old patterns.” She said the region sorely needed a safe, stable environment where women could recalibrate.
By August, the home reached its capacity of seven women. It’s right in town, “which is so important,” Kingsolver said, “because in this part of the country we have no public transportation.”
Subrenda Huff is interim director of the Higher Ground recovery house. “They’re living life,” she says of its residents. Credit: Taylor Sisk for KFF Health News.
Parsell has long suffered from social anxieties; drugs were her escape. Here, her housemates embraced her. They’ve offered the support she’d never experienced.
“Every two seconds, someone’s like, ‘Syara’s here!’” she said. “I’m very grateful for it.” If there’s an issue in the house, “one of the seven of us has the solution.”
Four residents are employed outside the home, one is enrolled in community college classes, one is completing her GED with plans to continue her education, and everyone volunteers in the community. Crafting classes are offered. Family members visit.
“They’re living life,” said Subrenda Huff, who was filling in while director Liz Brooks took maternity leave.
Morgan said she accomplished more in a month at Higher Ground than she had in years. That includes applying for identification documents, taking budgeting classes and seeking permanent housing. It includes sharing upkeep duties in the house.
Such was Kingsolver’s vision. But, she said, “here’s what I didn’t expect: The community embraced this with loving arms. I thought maybe people would say, ‘I don’t want this in my backyard.’”
Most of the furniture was donated. Kingsolver’s quarter-million or so social media followers have been instrumental in that. “But it’s not just book clubs in Switzerland or in California; it’s people in Pennington Gap,” she said. Church groups have donated “quilts, bedside lamps, things to hang on the walls just to make it homey.”
Before the facility opened, local folks volunteered to pull weeds, take down an old fence and put up a new one. Kingsolver said the well of support “has been just endless. It’s been deep, and loving, and a wonder to see.”
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Higher Ground, with only one paid staff member, has estimated yearly operating costs of $120,000, Cantrell said. Residents are charged $50 a week. Ventrell said that fees at other recovery houses vary widely but that $2,500 a month is an approximate average.
“We want them to focus on saving money and paying any restitution or fines they may have from past charges,” Cantrell said. “Some may be focused on repaying child support they may owe.”
Higher Ground receives no federal or state funding. Donations continue to pour in. And Kingsolver recently bought the building next door with plans to open a thrift shop, which would be a source of additional income for the home and offer retail work experience for its residents.
Supporters aspire to open more Higher Ground homes elsewhere in the region.
What these women are gaining, Kingsolver said, “is not just sobriety, but belief in themselves.”
The post ‘Demon Copperhead’ Author Lays Foundation for Women in Appalachia To Beat Addiction appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
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