For One Rural Community, Fighting Addiction Started With Recruiting The Right Doctor
Lindsay Bunker woke up from a nightmare.
The 32-year-old lives with her sixth-month-old daughter on the Lac Courte Oreilles Indian Reservation in northern Wisconsin. She's struggled with addiction for over 10 years, mostly to heroin. Then came the nightmare: She dreamt two men were attacking her baby while she could think only about drugs.
"In my mind I was thinking, 'If I can just get one hit, if I can get one line, I can save her,'" she recalls, pausing before continuing, "I woke up and I was panicking. How can a mother think like that?"
It was a wake-up call. Bunker says she realized in that moment that heroin was "evil" and she resolved to get into treatment. In a lot of rural America, that's where the story could have ended.
Many rural communities lack basic resources available than in urban areas—as many as may live in counties that lack detoxification services, for example.
