By Illaria Dana

Addiction has deep roots in our society. It would be hard to trace these roots to a specific time, to

the first addict. There was a BBC radio special narrated by Iggy Pop about William S. Burroughs, a writer

and a junky. The special discussed how Burroughs had influenced other artists, including Bob Dylan and

Neil Young with his manic stream of consciousness found in Naked Lunch. His book, Junky,

gave readers one of the public’s first insights into intravenous heroin use from his own experience. And as

readers, we were shocked, shocked and enamored. This is not a glamorous subject, though it pervades art

and film. Reading or watching the film adaptation of Requiem for a Dream or watching Drugstore

Cowboy is beautiful, touches the spirit, until addiction mames, kills, and drives the characters into

prostitution, into a death that no one would want or wish for anyone else. It takes them down, hard.

The existence of addiction in our culture as art leads to an important question – what drives

people to use? Is it a dissatisfaction with the way our lives operate? It is a feeling of loneliness? Now,

heroin is being discussed in the press. There were 204 deaths due to overdose in Cumberland County in

2014. You can find articles in Bangor Daily News, The Portland Press Herald, The New York

Times, and The New Yorker about addiction, to name a few, and these articles state that the rate of

addiction is growing. As a reader, one can discern a shift. Families are discussing the lives of the people

they loved who have died instead of trying to hide the addiction. Their hopes seem to be to reach the

people who are suffering, to tell them they are not alone, and to inspire addicts to seek treatment.

Another important aspect of discussing their loved ones’ addictions is to remove the stigma about

drug users which isolates them from the community. Above all else, addicts cannot recover alone, in

shame and secret. I spoke with a former intravenous heroin user, a 24-year-old man. He cited a supportive

community as being integral to his ability to stop using. He also spoke about the Needle Exchange in

Portland, located at 103 India Street, as being an important resource for addicts. He said, “Above all,

addicts are stigmatized. Some people believe that the Needle Exchange condones drug use, but I don’t

know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t been able to get clean needles. The interactions I had

with the people who worked there were always pleasant. Being an addict is like having a disease, and

when you go to the Needle Exchange, you are still sick. You’re still using. But you are in contact with

people who are living normal lives and who want you to get better. A lot of addicts aren’t fully aware of

the risks of sharing needles, and this place is important for them, too.”

The Beacon will continue to speak to community members who suffer from or seek to treat

addiction. If you are suffering, you are not alone, and there is hope and help available for you.