As Beau Zeis talked to a crowd about his decade-long drug addiction, almost-4-year-old Charlee and 2-year-old Layla played at his feet on the bandstand at Woodstock’s Park in the Square. About 75 people attended the rally where he and his daughters appeared in late August, an event sponsored by the McHenry County Substance Abuse Coalition. […]
A confluence of circumstances created the national opioid crisis in the late 1990s: the medical community’s acceptance of the idea that opioids were rarely addictive, the pharmaceutical companies’ aggressive marketing of prescription opioids, and the Joint Commission’s adoption of pain as the “fifth vital sign” of patients’ physical well-being, joining body temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate, […]
McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally believes that we have no one but ourselves to blame for the opioid crisis. “We did create the disease from the ground up,” he said. In 2016, Bloomsbury Press published Sam Quinones’ “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic.” In the book, Quinones pinpoints a January 1980 letter […]
ABOUT THIS SERIES The Independent today begins a four-part examination of how the Woodstock community has been affected by the silent, invisible killer of opioid addiction. Oct. 17: Even in the quiet suburbs, opioid abuse has become a problem that touches many people. Oct. 24: Doctors struggle to deal with an addiction epidemic their profession […]
Larry Lough is editor of The Independent and reports local news.
Janet Dovidio has been a freelance correspondent for The Independent for eight years.
Susan W. Murray wrote for The Independent, covering various beats, from 2005 to 2008.
Tricia Carzoli is a freelance writer and photographer that on community news.
