The Demonization of Rural America

By the time I was seven or eight years old, I was keenly aware of my father’s drug use. He didn’t snort pills in front of me yet—he saved that for my teen years—but he talked about pills freely and I knew he took them. He was meaner than usual when he couldn’t get his pills, and I learned to recognize the signs of withdrawal long before I ever heard that term. Any hope for stability in our lives probably vanished before I could walk. And by the time I...