Out in Portsmouth, Ohio, the recovery revival continues to gain energy, surrounding the rap video by local group, RWR (Raw Word Revival), and their song, “What the Hell You Know About That 740?”
Folks are now selling t-shirts with the song title to benefit SOLACE for $15 each. (Save me one, folks!)
SOLACE is a group of Portsmouth mothers who’ve lost children to heroin or prescription pill overdoses.
Formed by Jo Anna Krohn in 2010, SOLACE was the first parents group in Ohio — and really the country, as far I know — to call attention to the opiate epidemic.
Before that, JoAnna told me, parents hid the facts behind their children’s deaths, and lived in isolated suffering. No one in Portsmouth was getting outraged at what was happening. (JoAnna’s son, Wes, killed himself while high on prescription pills at a party in 2008.)
There are now SOLACE chapters in 16 Ohio counties.
The opiate epidemic is a quiet, insidious thing, without the public violence of, say, the crack plague of the 1980s that outraged so many people.
So parent groups speaking out are crucial in ending it, seems to me, because they’re the ones with the stories that can fire public outrage and galvanize the will of political leaders.
Anyway, lots of interesting stuff happening down there in Portsmouth, Ohio.
Meanwhile, here’s the RWR video again, a fantastic piece of DIY journalism:
Tell me what you know about the 7-4-0. Leave it in Comments.
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LOVE IT! I was born and raised in Scioto County and still live here today with my family. We need a small town revival. I currently work at an Addiction Treatment Center so I see what they are talking about 1st hand. I know I know most people think treatment centers just trade one drug for another. The way I see it addiction is a disease and some need medicine to help them get better. Some places aren’t legit and some are. I know I wouldn’t be working somewhere where I could be sent to prison. So Im here everyday trying to help those who really need it. If your addicted don’t give up get help..Its not easy but its worth it! Keep up the good work guys! We all have to stick together and clean this place up!
7-4-0 reminds me of my hometown, Elkhart, Indiana (574). Elkhart was built on the pharmaceutical, band instrument, and musical instrument manufacturing industries. Because of the mobile home industry, it tags along with the fortunes of Detroit. Don’t know about heroin, but backpack meth and home meth labs (one blew up across the street from the high school) are everywhere.