ARTICLES

Ministry in Appalachia: Admitting to powerlessness is key to treatment

By Jean Denton
Special to The Catholic Virginian

Shortly after Sister Beth Davies, CND, responded to God’s call to “live on the margins” with the people in Appalachia, she was blessed with an opportunity to share the experience of their lives first-hand.

She had been in Lee County, at the center of southwest Virginia’s coalfields, for less than a year in 1973 when Father Les Schmidt, a Glenmary priest, invited her to accompany him on “sounding sessions” throughout the Appalachian region. They were on the road in 11 states that October, holding sessions.

Through these gatherings, conducted for the Catholic Committee on Appalachia, they would hear people’s stories, expressed in their own words, of their struggle with poverty and exploitation.

The sessions would result in a groundbreaking pastoral letter, “This Land is Home to Me,” issued by the 26 Catholic bishops of Appalachia in 1975.

The pastoral was written by Joe Holland, a former priest working for The Center for Concern.

By including the words of the Appalachian people and employing their poetic expressions of their circumstance, a document was produced that inspired oppressed people all over the world and gave the bishops a context for future efforts of the church in the region.

“I don’t think the people gathered had an inkling of what they taught me,” Sister Beth said of the meetings.

“I was inspired by the mostly hidden efforts of so many who were quietly cutting a swath through selfishness and coziness, working in society and church to bring more just structures.”

That inspiration, along with her personal relationship with the people in Lee County, would move her to work in the community in various capacities for many years, eventually finding her principal ministry in treating victims of substance abuse and addiction.

In 1982, Sister Beth and Divine Providence Sister Elizabeth Vines, a close friend who died in 2006, established the Addiction Education Center in Pennington Gap. Substance abuse is a common problem in economically depressed areas and even more so in mining communities where workers go weeks at a time “without seeing the light of day,” Sister Beth explained.

Before the AEC there were no services in the county for families and victims of addiction.

Sister Beth was called to substance abuse counselling through her own treatment for alcoholism in 1979. After landing in a Lee County jail for DUI, she explained, her community sent her to New Jersey for what she described as “the best in treatment.”

“What a place I had come to,” she remembered of that low moment when she admitted to her disease.

“But after these many years and what I have experienced here, I have learned that what I thought was the worst thing that ever happened to me turned out to be my greatest gift.”

She explained, “Before, I saw people being exploited but I could never identify with it until I’d experienced it myself.

“I remember once asking a woman who was a victim of domestic abuse, ‘Why do you stay (with your husband)? Why do you let him do this to you?’ and she said, ‘Because when he is hitting me I just know that I am nothing.’”

Sister Beth continued, “When I was in jail it was the first time that I could truly identify with that woman — I thought I was nothing. That was when I got on my knees and admitted total powerlessness.”

In 1997, the latest outrage to hit Appalachia took hold in Lee County and its blow fell heavily at the addiction center — Oxicontin.

“It changed the face of Appalachia — we will never be the same because of this drug,” Sister Beth noted.

Oxicontin is the brand name of Purdue Pharma’s oxicodone drug, a prescription pain killer.

“There is no question that it was highly marketed by pharmaceutical representatives in this community because of the high rates of disability and pain from the mining industry, a lot of poverty and high Medicaid rates,” Sister Beth contended.

People began coming to the AEC for problems associated with taking “oxys” which the staff hadn’t yet heard of. But by 2000 “it had rocked this whole community,” Sister Beth related.

Crime rates soared and foster care rates went up 300 percent because parents addicted to the drug couldn’t care for their children.

“We’d never seen anything go so fast. It spread across Appalachia like a cancer,” she said.

The panicking community crowded into a forum at Lee County High School. Local leaders, including Dr. Art VanZee and Sister Beth, joined others around the country filing complaints with the drug company and Congress.

The company denied claims that it had mislabeled the drug as being lower risk and less addictive than other pain medications.

As they counseled growing numbers of people addicted to oxicodone, Sister Beth recalled, they heard the repeated story from users that “With this drug the first time I tried it, I had to have more,” suggesting immediate addiction.

After several years of mounting evidence, the drug maker finally admitted mislabeling and the drug’s use has abated, though the community still reels from its consequences of death and human loss.

One result of the community forum, however, was the creation of New Beginnings, a long-term residential substance abuse treatment center, in Dryden near Pennington Gap. Opened three years ago, it serves people throughout a 50-mile radius in the Appalachia coal fields. It is proving to be a model facility partly because it serves low-income and no-income families (treatment is on a sliding scale) and can be effective because it allows for treatment over a long term.

Funded through grants and donations, the 40-bed facility “is always full and has a waiting list,” Sister Beth said, adding that there are plans to expand to an adjacent building that has been donated. Keeping up with costs, she said, “is a struggle, but it’s better than we ever expected.”

So Sister Beth hasn’t slowed down and continues to be gratified and buoyed by God’s Spirit in Appalachia as the people come together to sustain their community and each other.

“Sure there have been downtimes,” she said, “but with every success I see someone then going out and working to help others — I see how they want to be part of the transformation.”

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