Dont miss this Times mag piece on the heroic epidemic in the northeast. Heres how it starts off: One day last summer, Ann and her husband, Tom, walked two and a half hours to reach Hazleton, a onetime mining town in eastern Pennsylvania. They had lived there until July, when they were evicted and moved in with Ann’s mother in Sugarloaf, a more affluent township nearby. There was not much to miss about Hazleton, with its decaying downtown and its fading homes spotted with satellite dishes, but to Ann and Tom the town held a shimmering appeal: It had heroin, a lot of it. They had called the usual friends for a ride, with no luck, and their own car had been repossessed. So at midday, the two left Ann’s mother’s condominium by foot and followed the asphalt out of the valley all the way to Hazleton. Eventually they turned onto Alter Street, where, especially in summer, heroin dealers greeted customers outside a packed barbershop and a busy pawnshop, clustering around them, competing for business. Sometimes Ann and Tom joined other users they knew behind a building, where someone had left a tattered couch. Sometimes they got high in an abandoned garage on a side street. Though the walk that day to Alter Street was long, it was worth it to them both: Tom, especially, loved heroin, and Ann loved Tom, and the march to Hazleton was as much about need as it was about love. -Erika
Posted on: Tue, 13 May 2014 21:00:01 +0000
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