Cold Turkey, by Karen Stuebing

Filed under: Themes, Addictions, Art Gallery 

Cold Turkey – by Karen Stuebing

Cold Turkey

by Karen Stuebing 

Drug addiction is a huge problem in Southern West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia. In my little neighborhood alone, I can take you for a short drive and point to every third house: “That guy’s a dealer,” “He’s strung out,” “She uses.” This would not be evident to anyone who didn’t live here. These are nice houses. You won’t see attack dogs, graffiti, trash, people standing on street corners, or any other typical signs of drug-infested areas. 

It shows no partiality to the poor and has crept into middle class America as well. 

Its origins began with the drug oxycontin. Oxycontin is a powerful, time release form of oxycodone. Whereas percocet, a milder form of oxycodone, was prescribed in the past for pain relief, oxycontin was introduced and heavily marketed by Purdue as a new and more effective treatment. Since Appalachia has a large number of people on disability with work-related injuries, doctors began dispensing it freely, unaware of its highly addictive properties. 

While Percocet and other milder narcotics come in dosages of 10 mgs, oxycontin provided up to 100 mgs in a single dose, time released over 12 hours. It made sense in theory but the reality was that people found if they crushed the pills they defeated the time release mechanism providing them with an intense and immediate high. The abuse began. 

At first, the doctors were willing to prescribe it freely. Then as more and more people became addicted, crime increased and people began to die of overdoses and the news media discovered it and publicized the prevalence of “hillbilly heroin” addiction. 

Formerly crime-free areas became riddled with burglaries and drugstores were robbed at gun point. It got so bad most pharmacies stopped carrying oxycontin and posted signs to that effect. 

The DEA stepped in. Several doctors were sanctioned and even arrested for overprescription of the drug. The backlash started and the legal source dried up. 

Today, doctors in this area refuse to prescribe narcotics. Pain clinics were established for those with legitimate chronic pain. Users were cut off immediately. 

So the original addicts remained with no treatment options, just an insatiable need for more and more of the drug as tolerance increased, creating a thriving and very expensive street drug market. People who could get prescriptions began selling them for the huge profit they could make. For every ten people arrested, twenty more dealers appear. 

The majority of these people want to stop. Lacking any detox facilities, they attempt unbelievably brutal cold turkey withdrawals. 

This photo essay is my attempt to illustrate the extreme discomfort of that process which accounts for its high percentage of failure. By the third or fourth day most serious addicts give it up. 

It isn’t a pretty subject and they aren’t pretty photos. I used myself to shoot it as there is really no way to do it and protect anonymity. Besides no one going through this is going to be willing to be photographed. 

I think it needs to be portrayed. People have the misconception junkies are weak-willed self-indulgent individuals. The reality is that they were either initially addicted by prescription use or turned on by a friend to the drug, unaware it would bring them to the point that they would lie, steal or cheat to fill an overwhelming physical need and to avoid the unbearable process of cold turkey withdrawal. 

So I bring you “Cold Turkey” – a photo essay on narcotic withdrawal. This has a happy ending. A few of these stories do. Some people manage to make it through. But the reality is most don’t. They’re out there on my streets in my neighborhood, their lives centered on getting money to buy drugs any way they can. Going through repeated efforts to quit and failing again and again. 

This illustrates just a small part of cold-turkeying narcotics and is abbreviated to a week’s time frame. You can take this and multiply by a hundred to get a real sense of what it’s like. 

There’s no point in blaming anyone. The junkie who became in most cases unwittingly addicted. The drug company that produced a legitimate, effective pain relief medication. The doctors who prescribed it thinking they were helping. Instead the focus should be on a humane solution that provides affordable and readily available treatment options. Otherwise, we just write off thousands of people and condemn them to a short and miserable existence.

*All photos by Karen Stuebing