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.
Gabrielle Guthrie is long time resident of Jefferson County
Excellent analysis, Jim. The thriving drug culture in Port Townsend is yet another negative aspect of the Gray Ponytail takeover of Port Townsend’s (and Jefferson County’s by extension) politics and culture during the last several decades. Pretending to be artists, musicians and philosophers, no-load drug users have so poisoned the town as to render it uninhabitable for working class families, as evidenced by the shrinking numbers in Port Townsend schools. Marijuana is now worshipped and considered all but essential to daily existence, to the point its cultivation is considered agriculture. Mindless Marxism has replaced the moderate to conservative politics prevalent when I ventured here from Kitsap County forty years ago. It makes me shudder to think what Port Townsend could become if and when a few dozen Antifa terrorists decide to make this town an operational satellite. I’m quite certain the town and its “leaders” would welcome them with open arms.
Gabrielle Guthrie is the author of this article. A WordPress glitch provided the wrong by line. Now fixed. Thanks for writing us.
I have volunteered for over 16 years with the Sheriff’s Office. I’ve been friends with all of our Deputy’s and I have to say they have a really tough job… They see our youth on drugs.. they see those with drug habits not only drugged but also stealing whatever they can to support that life style.
About 10 years ago I was shopping at the hardware store in Hadlock. When I left there I saw a young woman on her hands and knee’s in the road in front of the store. As I was already leaving, I turned around and, as I did, I called 911. I had dispatch on the phone when I got back to the woman. I first asked her if she was ok and did she need help… her mumbled reply was “I’m praying”.. she had her forehead on the asphalt pavement. Dispatch asked me to ask her what her name was.. she answered “XXXX”. Dispatch said they knew her and would send fire dept and law.
Later I learned that she was in her early twenties but had a meth habit ever since her father had given her meth at age 14. She had been an A and B student. But meth had completely taken over her life.
She died about 5 years later… I’m sure meth was a cause of her death. It certainly was a cause of her becoming a meth addict.
I don’t know what Jefferson County can do with our limited funds but something must be done about our homeless, our citizens with mental problems and our drug addicts…. Personally, my feeling is that we need to allow larger stores with items we need to be built here. As it is now if you want to buy clothing, cars, furniture… you have to go to Clallam or Kitsap County.. They get the sales tax revenue.
Well said. It is just a tragic and heartbreaking situation and it has been going on for years. What we really need is some strong political will and a community wide response to addiction. It really takes a multi faceted approach. We need cops working to keep drugs out of our area, but we also need an economy that provides some kind of opportunity, hope for those in recovery. Supporting businesses tends to support jobs which than creates housing which helps to give people a future and a hope, some kind of personal investment in the community.