Waiting a year sounds good in theory, but love and attraction are not things anyone can plan for. Dating for recovering addicts presents a different set of challenges that people without a substance abuse problem don’t necessarily experience. Addict or not, anyone who is single can attest to the fact that dating can be a […]
Who are we serving when we make private struggles public? About a year ago, my friend Adrienne* was found near-dead in her apartment after an overdose of fentanyl and other opiates. She had been fired from her job the day before, after her employers had uncovered her drug abuse. Adrienne had wanted to get caught; […]
Addiction does not discriminate. My relationship with my hometown is complicated. Like much of the rural Western Maryland, West Virginia, Southern Pennsylvania area, it’s hardly a spearhead of social progressivism: Our neighborhood Moose Lodge denied membership to a black man in the 1990s, and Confederate flags dot the landscape as naturally as the cornfields. It […]
What drives young men who commit horrific crimes? It may be a simple lack of basic morality. Lately, when I see a scowling teenage boy walking through my suburban town, skateboard clutched under one arm, a starscape of acne across his forehead, I experience a quiver of anxiety. The same apprehension clutches me when a […]
I knew, like Winehouse, that I was No Good, but I insisted, as she did, on my own right to choose not to be. Both times I met Amy Winehouse, it struck me as amazing she hadn’t died already. She was 25, and I remember her dimunitive, emaciated, beehive-topped body reminding me of Marion Cotillard’s […]
This originally appeared on Alternet.org. Republished here with permission. Criminalization of pregnancy and unpaid maternity leave are some of the obstacles mothers face in the U.S. It’s ironic that while women are constantly bombarded with attacks on abortion rights, our society and economic system provide virtually no support for women when they decide to have […]
