A War on Us - Adeline Praud
The opioid epidemic, far from being an isolated phenomenon, is embedded in a system that includes North-South inequalities (drug trafficking), the criminalization of drug use (war on drugs), systemic violence (social inequalities, sexist and sexual violence, racism, etc.). Historically, does the opioid epidemic not represent the end of a system that has definitively failed to take care of its fellow citizens?
In Vermont, some communities, families and individuals have chosen to confront the crisis. Beyond the actions and systems established to repair and sustain what can be fixed (detoxification centers, rehab, transitional living, prescriptions of substitution drugs, support groups and therapeutic follow-up care), there are connections and relationships which can help to disrupt the cycle of addiction and isolatedness. In some rural communities and deindustrialized and disaffected areas, traumas both collective and individual merge. Landscapes and bodies have been affected. Communities have been shaken to their core.
What are the prerequisites for a state of resilience, both collective and individual? Where does the momentum that propels us towards healing come from? Why do many people who live with substance use disorder find it so difficult to understand that they are not solely responsible for what happens to them, and that their trajectory is the consequence of political choices that favor power and money over the well-being of citizens? These are some of the questions that guide my photographic research.
