This is an excerpt from Chapter 12: Exchanging Needles and Kindness for Judgement and Safety in my book Deviate From Denial: Erasing the Stigma of Addiction and Recovery Through Inspirational Stories.
Sitting at a light, I chewed at the corner of my fingernail as I watched the cars pass by one after another. My thoughts were racing.
What will I see? Will I scare people off? Is this dangerous?
I reached for my phone and shot a quick text to my boyfriend.
“Going to film a story near Carl’s Tailor Shop,” it read. “Be back around five‐thirty. Call me around then?”
I took a right turn and watched as the town I’ve come to call home for the past few years turned into unfamiliar territory. I passed the Cook Out and Taco Bell and turned down a street lined with cracked sidewalks and buildings with broken windows.
My eyes searched the buildings and parking lots I was passing for any sign of the event I was looking for. Eventually I saw it: two white plastic tables and a van. A small sign stood near the edge of the road that read “Access Point of Georgia.”
I took my time parking and threw up a quick prayer. I exhaled a deep breath of air as I stepped out of the car.
I was a junior journalism major at the University of Georgia, working on a long form, multi‐platform story about the impact of the opioid epidemic on my college town of Athens, Georgia. This type of journalism was outside of my normal tight deadline assignments, and instead I had months to take a deep dive into a larger issue affecting the city I’d come to call home.
I found Riley Kirkpatrick, a certified peer specialist at a local recovery center. After a couple of Zoom calls, he told me about a new project he had launched with treatment provider Ali McCorkle. It was a syringe service program, also known as a needle exchange. Listening to his stories, I knew a Zoom interview just wasn’t going to be enough. I wanted to see the work they were doing up close and in person.
The idea is simple: People who are currently in active addiction can visit a table set up in a parking lot twice a week to exchange their used needles for new, clean ones.
I’m not going to lie, I was a little skeptical. Syringe service programs, or SSPs, are controversial, and I get why. When it comes to addiction and recovery, enabling is a buzz word.
A fine line exists between showing support and enabling someone to keep using. It can be hard to walk that line, and it’s one that often gets blurred. Was an SSP not right in the middle of that blur?
If you enjoyed this teaser, you can find other stories from my book here or you can buy my book on Amazon, or follow me on social media to be a part of my community.
