It’s not an easy subject. Heroin.

But it’s important to talk about it.

We were honored last week to have as guests for a PublicSource event people in recovery who are now giving back to the community, and parents who’ve lost children to drug addiction and are reaching out to other parents.

They need to talk about addiction so that we can see that they’re people just like us who had a disease. The parents need to share their stories to help relieve their own grief and reach out to help other parents.

And they need us to engage in the conversation to help remove the stigma of drug addiction — the shame that so many bear because others think addiction is about weakness or bad parenting or poverty.

You can see the video of the panel and the conversation with people in the audience here.

You can see the tweets about the evening and a story about the panel here.

Thanks to all those who participated. We have a long way to go with this problem. PublicSource will continue to cover it.

YouTube video

 

Jeffrey Benzing

PublicSource criminal justice reporter Jeffrey Benzing, who has been reporting
on the heroin epidemic, has received a 2015 McCormick Specialized Reporting fellowship
supported by the Poynter Institute. He’ll go to Chicago for specialized police-community
relations training at the Community Media Workshop on the Columbia College Chicago campus.
The Workshop’s program is funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

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