**Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown | Massachusetts | S04 E07 | All Documentary — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/anthony-bourdain-parts-unknown-massachusetts-s04-e07/

Anthony Bourdain explores Western Massachusetts, from Provincetown's history and gay culture to Franklin County's struggle with an opioid and heroin epidemic.

## Key Takeaways

- Heroin addiction in rural western Massachusetts has spread to nearly every family and community
- Economic decline from lost industry has contributed to hardship and vulnerability to addiction
- Provincetown's history reflects a long tradition of tolerance and acceptance of marginalized communities
- Addiction affects individuals and families across generations, with lasting emotional consequences
- Local communities are seeking proactive solutions rather than waiting for outside intervention

## What the video covers

- Bourdain opens by recounting buying his first heroin in 1980, tying his personal history to western Massachusetts
- He revisits Provincetown on Cape Cod, where he spent youthful summers in the early 1970s working as a cook and dishwasher
- Provincetown is portrayed as a historically tolerant town welcoming artists, writers, and the LGBTQ community
- Local figures recount the town's transformation from a Portuguese fishing community to a gay-friendly destination
- The Atlantic House, described as America's oldest operating gay bar, is highlighted as a landmark of local history
- The episode shifts inland to Franklin County, where heroin has become an exploding crisis touching many families
- Residents of towns like Shelburne Falls describe economic decline after the loss of mills and industry
- Testimonies from people in recovery and from families affected by addiction reveal the personal toll of the epidemic
- Local leaders describe grassroots efforts to address the crisis and set an example for the state and nation
- The episode contrasts nostalgic memories of the past with the struggles of the present

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Opening: Bourdain's First Heroin Purchase in Massachusetts
2. 03:00 Provincetown: Youth, Beaches, and Early Days
3. 07:10 Spiritus Pizza and Portuguese Cooking Traditions
4. 13:00 The Atlantic House and Provincetown's Gay History
5. 18:20 Fishing Heritage and the Town's Changing Identity
6. 26:40 Shifting Inland: Heroin Crisis in Western Massachusetts
7. 38:20 Shelburne Falls and Economic Decline
8. 46:40 Personal Stories of Addiction and Recovery
9. 55:00 Community Response and Hope in Franklin County

Answers

## Questions about this video

Why does Bourdain return to Provincetown in this episode?

Bourdain revisits Provincetown, where he worked as a young cook in the early 1970s. The return triggers nostalgia for his youth and reflection on how the town has changed over the decades.

What is the main issue explored in western Massachusetts?

The episode focuses on the heroin and opioid epidemic in Franklin County and surrounding areas. Residents describe how addiction has spread widely, affecting families and communities that were once economically stable.

What role does the Atlantic House play in the episode?

The Atlantic House is described as America's oldest operating gay bar, with a history of welcoming notable figures. It symbolizes Provincetown's long tradition of acceptance for the LGBTQ community.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

[Music] this is where i bought my first bag of heroin it was 1980 i was 24 years old but in a lot of ways my whole life up to that point was leading to this address [Music] western massachusetts the unlikely new

00:22

Speaker A

frontier of america's war on drugs where heroin has become an exploding problem that's begun to touch nearly every family [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] beautiful [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] shy [Music] there's nothing like the north atlantic it's majestic i love the beach

01:29

Speaker A

pretty much had my first everything on a beach you name it first time i did it beach i was uh miserable in love happy in love alternately as only a 17 year old could be this is where i lived a very happy

01:43

Speaker A

summer in the early 70s and uh that was my room on the left it's an amazing spot if you think about a bunch of knuckleheads working as dishwashers or waiters and pizza servers you know we could live on

01:54

Speaker A

a beach like this you know happier stupider times you know i can still hear the playlists robert e letter and the brothers johnson if you put on marvin gaye right now i'd burst into tears what do you do you're young you go to

02:12

Speaker A

the beach you know you get laid and you you get high it was here all the way out at the tip of cape cod provincetown massachusetts where the pilgrims first landed and it was where i first landed [Music]

02:28

Speaker A

1972 washed in a town with a head full of orange sunshine and a few friends provincetown a wonderland of tolerance long time tradition of accepting artists writers the badly behaved the gay the different it was paradise [Music] the joy that can only come with an

02:48

Speaker A

absolute certainty that you're invincible that none of the choices that you make will have any repercussions or any effect on your later life because we didn't think about those things i don't even know what i thought it was going to

03:00

Speaker A

be at that point i certainly didn't think i was going to be a cook don't know what i thought it was gonna be i was just you know hanging out in a beautiful place a golden time i look back on those fuzzy memories and

03:11

Speaker A

they seem golden anyway oh there's john waters first love and there's me this guy johnny yingling was sort of a central figure in all of our lives well my name is john yingling and this is spiritus pizza it's been here since

03:33

Speaker A

1971. this town is everything to me problem sound is a really special place where people can be themselves we all did drugs acted young and crazy and tony was probably a little wilder and some and not as wild as others but he was always

03:48

Speaker A

the guy who i always liked and you let me sleep on top of the walk-in right i actually like that spirited i cannot tell you how frequently i dream about spirit's pizza i'm walking down commercial street and i'm sort of dimly

04:00

Speaker A

aware that spiritus has moved and there's a sense of dislocation and a loss as i stumble around this sort of provincetown dreamscape of 40 years ago that was still here i live in hope many of the old places in p-town are

04:19

Speaker A

gone [Music] but the lobster pot is still going strong all these years later and still has what i want indeed the essentials my friends worked in the kitchen here starting the tradition among my set the cooking work was noble toil at that

04:36

Speaker A

point i never intended a career as a chef it was great to be a cook i was getting it so this is a homemade portuguese kale soup made on the premises it's been a long time thank you enjoy it

04:49

Speaker A

portuguese soup a p-town version of the azorian caldo verde and just what i remembered kale fiery red chorizo liguisa kidney beans potatoes bro i missed you now i missed you battle that was precisely what i loved about the food

05:05

Speaker A

here but the portuguese thing dishes like this stuffed cod crusted with ground portuguese sausage breadcrumbs stuffed with scallop and crab some sherry red sauce i hadn't been working for a while i was in deadbeat i mean i'm just

05:19

Speaker A

you know scarfing off everybody else and fancy pool comes home from work and says uh our dishwasher didn't show up today you were our new dishwasher i said oh really and the next day i had put on the apron

05:31

Speaker A

and i didn't take it off for 30 years i'd wake up eat all of us go to the beach hang out on the beach till like two o'clock three o'clock yeah it was fun roll into work work all night drinking

05:43

Speaker A

getting a high drilling out food you got all the food you wanted all the liquor you wanted all the sex you wanted all the sex you wanted it was true it was fun we had it and yet you were still an essential part of the

05:53

Speaker A

economy it was a lot of fun believe me i remember the flagship it's where my cooking career started where i started washing dishes where i started having pretensions of culinary grandeur that would seem like a good gig for

06:06

Speaker A

anybody who else got to live like that during that time you had to sort of be in a band here we were you know we were dishwashers now you get a little older and you get a little more sense and you realize that

06:16

Speaker A

like you know you got to like pace yourself a little bit otherwise we still wouldn't be here well you know many of our friends from those days many of my friends are dead as you are keep drinking keep drinking

06:36

Speaker A

this place has been here forever it used to be the back room back then still there see it's all falling into place again yeah it's not that much different it's early spring now but come memorial day it gets crazy around here and doesn't

06:50

Speaker A

stop till labor day provincetown was always gay friendly in my time and way way before my time and this place the atlantic house known always and forever by locals and visitors alike as the a house is america's oldest operating gay bar

07:06

Speaker A

everybody has come through these doors so to speak most notably a naked and frolicking tennessee williams is the forest still shake or did they it got sea sick and started tripping now that it's even they all say let me have

07:22

Speaker A

a cocktail so i can get my sea legs back april cabral owns the joint now take it over for her father the legendary reggie cabral a forward-thinking dude if there ever was one it was built in 1798 how long in the family in your family

07:39

Speaker A

over 75 years my father during that time he had billie holiday appeared he had nina simone ella fitzgerald all the big names of jazz how was town changed has it changed oh i think tremendously gay lifestyle is much more accepted look

07:55

Speaker A

in 1972 my feeling was that this was a gay town and that i was here at the pleasure of you know somebody else which is sort of the opposite of everywhere outside of here at that time oh yes this was a largely catholic

08:09

Speaker A

portuguese uh conservative fishing community but it was also known as hell town it was hell town that's where the puritans sent their rejects right out here right farther away farther out that's not kidding i think always had the mixture really

08:24

Speaker A

of the bohemian people and the fishermen the pirates the writers the drunks all that anyone who had a lifestyle outside the mainstream was was welcome here whatever floats your boat you know it's all good oh how i wish we could go back

08:40

Speaker A

to that summer over a century ago provincetown was a hard-working fishing village with multi-generational families of fishermen [Music] my name's uh bo gribben my father fished and i i was pretty much raised here my whole life where i'm from that's who i am but it

09:15

Speaker A

used to be like two out of three families in this town this community were fishing families most of them are now gone and we're really like a minority it used to be a fishing community with a homosexual problem now it's a homosexual

09:28

Speaker A

community with a fish the first portuguese fishermen arrived here in 1840 the maine families created a community built around fishing and this town lived off that industry well into the 20th century it persisted even when i was here

09:43

Speaker A

keeping up old catholic fishing traditions like the blessing of the fleet these days however there are fewer and fewer boats to bless my name's scott rowe i'm a commercial fisherman sea scallops fourth generation i started when i was

09:59

Speaker A

five it was cool back then there was like 70 or 80 boats here they were five or six deep you know it's just down to like seven or eight no i'm wicked proud of my heritage and um i would never do anything else this is

10:13

Speaker A

my office man look at it i'm gonna do this until i can't move anymore we roll into town like clockwork 2 30 3 o'clock in the morning it's quiet the town's been ripped up all night long we come down here hit the water what

10:32

Speaker A

could be better well good tidy here be here and uh nice weather today yeah pretty nice day good it's a little breezy it might be a little nautical all right a little bit that's i'm sure i'll be fine i've watched the deadliest catch so

10:45

Speaker A

you ready i'm ready time to press the fun button [Music] clear all clear used to be that it was the best thing in the world we were like the greatest thing about fishing was you were kind of like

11:05

Speaker A

a cowboy like a pioneer you could go out and as hard as you could push competition was welcome we were fiercely independent that independence is like oh by little by little taken away is there a limited number of stuff out

11:18

Speaker A

there well there's a total allowable catch we're on a 600 pound trip limit right now and the payout ain't much do the math a good day of scalloping brings in say nine thousand bucks from that nine thousand take away three thousand for

11:31

Speaker A

the lease a thousand for fuel and split the remainder amongst the crew and on top of that fishing's really just a crapshoot many days there's simply nothing to catch so why the [ \_\_ ] are you doing this

11:44

Speaker A

we love to do like for us we say it all turns to [ \_\_ ] when we come back around the breakwater like once we get out to the end we feel like we're at home [Music] like i said it ain't easy today

12:01

Speaker A

according to beau scott and zev this was just a little [Music] breeze how rough does it have to be when you look out and say uh i'm not going out today uh it starts like blowing like 30 35 we like days like this because the

12:19

Speaker A

competition stays in really [ \_\_ ] my dad used to say when you're dry you're not making any money [Music] we're fishing so it's not gonna snap and go flying back take your head off not too often i hate when that happens yeah it's a

12:44

Speaker A

bummer yeah in the summer you'll be able to smell the coconut another big trick we have because now the guys decided they like this part of the beach right so they're all out here doing sunbathing so i pick up my glasses and i tell them

12:59

Speaker A

wow look at the dress on that girl you give it to them and they see something they weren't expecting to see it works every time though [Music] i can't believe you didn't cook nothing can't believe it man what got anthony

13:19

Speaker A

bourdain on deck we don't have nothing to eat the best part of it the anticipation to see what's in there no every toe i'm like i just can't wait you're like looking you're like what's gonna be in there what's gonna be

13:31

Speaker A

in there sometimes there's a disappointment but a lot of times it's disappointing how many we get gotta feel is that all right we're out that's why it's fishing and not catching yeah they'll taste all that much better this place was had been here forever

14:04

Speaker A

once when i rolled into town how long has this place been open for our time i think this is the only place in town that's unchanged these are paintings of customers how long do i have to drink here to get my

14:15

Speaker A

face up there 40 years a couple more years back when i worked in town for fishermen there was the foxel cookies tap room and this place the old colony of the three it's the only one left yeah baby

14:30

Speaker A

oh wait a minute i recognize these you guys eat as brawny hard-working men of the sea we deserve these beers these finest of all oysters the well fleets wow finest oysters known to man how are you these are

14:45

Speaker A

fantastic wow what a treat is there going to be a next generation of uh fishermen in the family what happens after you guys he's gonna die the next generation of fishermen that are like coming onto our boats they're off but they're opportunists for

14:58

Speaker A

the income it's not for the love of being on the water this is the end of the fisheries is going to die she is all right thank you guys cheers he's going to end badly cheers [Music] it's a nice house i mean it just feels

15:26

Speaker A

like i never left in a lot of ways but of course it's 40 years later almost and that was the uh sodom and gomorrah by the sea over there you know a big candy store for a horny stupid

15:38

Speaker A

17 year old with a taste for chemicals you know i was an angry young man what the hell was i so angry about it it came as a rude surprise to me when i turned 30 because i'd always sort of

15:48

Speaker A

figured i'd be dead by then i was still quite some time away from my first bag of heroin but uh you know there's a lot of ways it was a foregone conclusion my whole life was sort of leading up to that point

16:00

Speaker A

to my first bag of dough [Music] i left provincetown with restaurant experience a suntan and an ever deepening relationship with recreational drugs i went to culinary school then to new york city and never returned today however i'm staying in

16:36

Speaker A

massachusetts heading over to the western part of the state one of the most beautiful areas of the country the gorgeous mill towns victorian houses deeply felt famously upright new england values norm in rockwell america where something really inexplicable and

16:51

Speaker A

unexpected has happened new england is a new mecca for heroin use emergency room admissions overdose down we have rural law enforcement area dealing with crimes being committed that never happened detectives are working around the clock dealers are making a killing

17:07

Speaker A

not new york or baltimore or l.a or chicago but rural towns like this one are now statistically ground zero for the heroin epidemic what the hell happened [Music] the next couple years if this heroin use trend continues to grow it may be beyond

17:31

Speaker A

getting a handle on i'm a detective with the greenfield police department and my focus is undercover in narcotic investigations this is a well-known area to us very active heroin use past year it's just increased to a level i've never seen any other

17:50

Speaker A

drug come into an area people that are in it are all going to be affected it hasn't topped out yet someone you've known someone you went to school with someone you work with so um sonny crockett gets a ferrari uh

18:07

Speaker A

what's wrong with this picture tried the lexus but they said no way so i got this one it's been reported in the national papers there's been an explosion of uh heroin use heroin-related crimes overdoses now how's that happen i think

18:21

Speaker A

once this area realized that we had a heroin problem we were already behind it trying to play catch-up we are on the 91 corridor route 91 has been dubbed the heroin highway at this point it's a widely used road to go north and south

18:36

Speaker A

there's opportunists here and for low money input they're getting a high profit that's the typical heroin packaging there'll be bundles of 10 be 50 bags here so 60 to 80 bucks for 10.

18:47

Speaker A

and charge whatever they want it's all supply and demand that's one dose per for most people they'll do multiple bags anywhere from three to five bags at a time up to 30 bags a day and the the current economics of the the

19:02

Speaker A

town i am the only one assigned to the narcotics position how many heroin addicts you think are walking the streets of greenville right now i'm going to say that we're in the high hundreds wow we're in high high hundreds yeah

19:16

Speaker A

it's hitting every age group economic household it's out there so we don't have crips and bloods taken over motel rooms the person's selling you dope more likely to be familiar than a stranger [Music] i'm going to meet a past distributor

19:33

Speaker A

i've known for several years we meet carmen as we'll call her a powerful local heroin dealer turned paid confidential police informant out in the woods how did you get into the business initially i needed the money i needed to support

19:47

Speaker A

my family couldn't get a job how easy was it to get into the dope business not hard at all because it's cheap was there money in it oh hell yeah yeah oh yeah it's like mayberry out here from looking around

20:01

Speaker A

i mean who's using heroin now i mean what were kids kids today's heroin epidemic is different than the one that raged through america in the 1970s in a few significant ways back then heroin was mostly seen as a poor people

20:19

Speaker A

problem somebody else's problem the sort of thing that musicians and criminals got into marginal people far from the white main streets of mayberry usa what those people did to themselves well it was unfortunate but not our problem until somebody broke

20:34

Speaker A

into your house today it's absolutely the reverse the new addicts are almost entirely white middle class and from towns and areas like this how do you think you make it better are you drone whoa you don't no there's going to be more

20:49

Speaker A

robberies there's going to be more killings take one person off the street here two more come in you peek how many how many customers you have probably all of greenfield what happened how did the kid next door along with mom

21:08

Speaker A

pop and grandma too become users of hardcore illegal narcotic drugs the worst drug with the worst reputation well maybe start here once you've found the right doctor and have told him or her about your pain don't be afraid to take what they give

21:28

Speaker A

you often it will be an opioid medication here's a 1996 promotional video from the fine folks at purdue pharmaceuticals sent around to doctors it encouraged them to prescribe the latest newest most wonderful drug for long-term pain management oxycontin

21:45

Speaker A

some patients may be afraid of taking opioids because they're perceived as too strong or addictive but that is far from actual fact less than one percent of patients taking opioids actually become addicted sales of oxycontin initially and falsely proclaimed as not

22:04

Speaker A

addictive absolutely skyrocketed from 45 million in 1996 to 3.1 billion in 2010. that same year perdue tweaked the way they were making oxy in an attempt to they said limit its addictive qualities finally the government and law enforcement took a harsh look at the

22:23

Speaker A

drug and it became much harder to get legally which sucked for the thousands and thousands who by now had a serious habit i'm ruth potee i'm a family physician in greenfield massachusetts and i grew up here my dad was actually a

22:39

Speaker A

small town doctor out here i'm a total generalist but for the last four or four and a half years a larger part of my practice has been focused on addiction to opiates you know i got put on pain medication

22:50

Speaker A

then when they started disappearing everybody else is doing it the heroine yeah i can get a bag of heroin easier than i can get a joint and once they start they just slip down that rabbit hole and um you know

23:04

Speaker A

maybe they make it out that's our goal is to get them out and to live healthy again we've really in our own way created this mess that we're in now [Music] in downtown greenfield the people's pint an eco-conscious locovorian pub that

23:22

Speaker A

brews its own beer uses only farm fresh ingredients and composts its leftovers it's where i meet up with dr potee for dinner i guess my first question is who's doing dope everybody starts with pills there's nobody everybody everybody

23:36

Speaker A

starts with pills there's nobody who goes from marijuana to heroin there's an in-between step always pills it's pills that people get from their doctor from me particularly the young people had an injury a sports related injury had their wisdom teeth out and they felt

23:50

Speaker A

awesome on the drug and they were like how can i get more of that after three to six months i'm looking for more to that they couldn't find it and then they jumped is it the is it big pharma's fault is it

24:00

Speaker A

doctor's fault is it every who's who made a mistake here so i think it's complicated i'm not going to say there's one one entity here that's responsible but there is a lot of money to be made by promoting the treatment of pain to

24:14

Speaker A

the highest level and big pharma made a lot of money on this and i was taught in residency you give people as much pain medicine as they need you get them out of pain we will judge your hospital or judge your

24:25

Speaker A

emergency room based on your pain scores that's how we were taught and we're also told these medicines aren't really all that addictive we started handing out pills like crazy 100 million americans have chronic pain so we did a disservice as doctors and as

24:40

Speaker A

prescribers like we took data that was [ \_\_ ] right and then we went forth with it and said oh prescribe it to everyone they won't get addicted we know what we're doing guess what we didn't know what we were doing

25:00

Speaker A

[Music] a few miles down the road from greenfield is shelburne falls the good old days that everybody used to talk about back when i was a kid sundays church and picnics saturday nights sox games beer and bowling the shelburne

25:21

Speaker A

falls bowling alley is where time seems anyway to have stopped first opened in 1906 this is the second oldest bowling alley in america dedicated to old-school new england-style candlepin bowling the holy rollers a crowd of septigenerians who grew up in shelburne

25:42

Speaker A

and plan and this is a reasonable expectation to kick my ass they've been playing here since the 50s i was never allowed to come near the bowling alley really this is a den of inequity oh this was my aunt did not

25:53

Speaker A

think this was a good idea man it's a tiny little ball this looks really hard it's very different job and falls i grew up here very different people don't know each other as well as everyone used to know each other when i

26:20

Speaker A

grew up in greenfield everybody had jobs i worked from the time i was 13.

26:25

Speaker A

if i had to go back there uh now i don't believe in drugs i don't think i do it but what choice would i have standing on the corner i probably would get into a business what's a good business well-paying

26:38

Speaker A

business i'm sorry that's that's where we are yes it used to be a very different world towns like this one and there were many but like everywhere else it seems the mills the factories close down and with them a

26:54

Speaker A

certain kind of social contract with the people who work there my name is ed gregory originally from turner's falls born and brought up here born in 1945 my father was an employee of the strathmore mill as was my grandfather during the heyday

27:10

Speaker A

there were three paper mills a cotton mill a silk mill a foundry or just a beehive of activity here back then a company town like this the company actually took care of you they built and provided homes for their

27:22

Speaker A

employees schools the river provided energy the company provided nearly everything else the hay day is gone people are definitely struggling to find work the town just kind of died during the 80s when the folks came to work they were

27:39

Speaker A

immigrants attracted by the manufacturing here correct you know maybe the possibility of owning a home in a real decent part of the part of the county here so my my father was here on the millwright millwright's job as

27:58

Speaker A

a jack of all trades if you will if there was something that needed to be repaired so you could work in a mill live in a nice home send your kids to school make a living all on a meal salary you bet it's

28:08

Speaker A

unthinkable now almost what happened to the the business things are going to other countries but not coming back to the united states this time became redundant uh correct again and again all over the country i keep running into situations like this

28:24

Speaker A

where industry has died or fled or simply relocated i meet people like charles garville hometown heroes who for some reason though they could probably go anywhere take their skills and return to where they grew up shady glenn diner today's special a

28:44

Speaker A

tribute to the old european immigrant culture of the area the new england boiled dinner so i hear rumors of corned beef and cabbage is that right yeah we do every week we do a corned beef and cabbage dinner

28:55

Speaker A

slowly cooked corned beef boiled potatoes steamed cabbage wow that's a beast awesome thank you how long have you been here two years were you from this area yeah i grew up here and i've been coming here since a

29:07

Speaker A

kid and went through a few owners and then it came up for sale and decided to give it a shot generally speaking who are your customers most of them they're uh retirees they've been coming here since they were

29:17

Speaker A

30. and this you don't see so much anymore dino era homemade pies and lots of them all baked on premises raspberry cream pie for me thank you this is not something that we see a lot of old school pie like

29:31

Speaker A

that and this number of them yeah everything is made here and they're all the original recipes from the 60s so yeah the index cards are so old they're all faded yellow this is exotic for me really oh yeah

29:42

Speaker A

well how's business it's getting better the drug problem has it has started to really get rampant it took over may 1st 2012 and by the end of that year i was broken into four times it wasn't just me that was broken it was

29:53

Speaker A

multiple businesses time after time i came in one morning to open up and i actually had a guy in front of the register and he uh got up pulled the knife out i realized it really wasn't worth anything over a knife so i think what

30:04

Speaker A

you're doing here is terrific i mean you know a man can go get a good hot open turkey sandwich and a good slice of pie it's a beautiful thing my name is heather taylor [Music] i'm a mother of three he's gonna buy you

30:42

Speaker A

a diamond the two older kids experience my addiction addiction started with pills i started sniffing heroin i shot up for the first time and shortly there later i found out i was pregnant i had my daughter she was in the

31:02

Speaker A

hospital for six weeks because she was addicted to the methadone and i had to watch my baby go through withdrawal my son was four and my daughter was six weeks when they were taken away i lost my kids

31:18

Speaker A

for 33 days shy of two years i became serious about my recovery so is this the bad part of town or is this just a place where you're unlikely to be people to find you just a place where people are unlikely

31:35

Speaker A

to find you i wouldn't necessarily say there was a bad part of greenfield i mean it's probably pretty spread out bad i guess you'd say so what would you do you should come here to shoot up yep you know we'd go down here and just

31:52

Speaker A

hang out down there i bet if we walked along here we'd probably find needles and bags and you know so basically you'd cop come down here shoot up and then where you where are you gonna nod out just sit down just sit down and hang out

32:05

Speaker A

or if it's a day like this probably just hang out under the underpass over there not exactly la vida loca no as you can see all the trash and yuck it's dirty and gross and there's probably people who live down

32:19

Speaker A

here really yeah there's a lot of homeless people in greenfield what do you think now like when you see somebody like who's clearly junk sick on the street you know it gives me that yuck sick feeling and it scares me

32:34

Speaker A

like it reminds me why i don't want to be out there it's just scary friend of mine overdosed january 1st of this year and my brother-in-law overdosed in wendy's bathroom and they found him and they brought him back to life he was

32:48

Speaker A

dead in the bathroom so this is my narcan i carry this around i have one of these in my house and i have one of these in my car i have a fear that my husband's gonna relapse and i'm gonna find him dead

33:06

Speaker A

you just put this in here and squirt it up their nose no in most cases i understand it they're right out of it yeah they're right out of it and they're instantly sick they don't wake up happy but they wake up

33:16

Speaker A

but they wake up hey you're in a piece of me you walk to the bathroom and there's somebody there are you you saving that life yep saving that life absolutely and then kicking their ass better now life better now absolutely

33:34

Speaker A

my kids have been home three years you know i no longer have to watch my back you know i live a pretty straight and narrow life which you know people might say is boring but i love my life today

33:47

Speaker A

i'm grateful where are we headed this way to the recover project this is where my recovery started started nearly a decade ago on one of the two main streets of greenfield the recover project is community-based an open arms program aimed at helping

34:04

Speaker A

addicts stay clean given the opiate heroin epidemic in our community we'd like to start the conversation just kind of sharing with one another you know what happened at that point of our life what that was like so as a child growing up in a home

34:21

Speaker A

in addiction i didn't understand how they could do all the stuff that they did to me and my brother and sister like don't you love me enough then i became a mother and then i became a heroin addict

34:34

Speaker A

and i did all that stuff to my kids my doctor was my biggest drug dealer i fell down a flight of stairs i'd just been married had a baby was working two jobs college on top of it next thing you know

34:43

Speaker A

i'm on these prescriptions that's where it all began for me what are the odds that you're going to own a house what's the odds that you're going to have a nice car what's yeah any car a place to live all that stuff seems

34:54

Speaker A

less and less likely all the time contrast that with what happens when you stick a spike in your arm and why wouldn't it so i have this picture in my head of when i got the phone call that my

35:05

Speaker A

daughter's father had been in the accident and i had just had a c-section and they come in with this needle to give me ativan i think and all i really needed was a hug like i just needed someone to come up to

35:16

Speaker A

me and give me a hug and say we i care about you caitlyn and everything's gonna be okay i'll tell you something really shameful about myself the first time i shot up i looked at myself in the mirror with a big crimp

35:31

Speaker A

you know something was missing in me whether it was a self-image situation whether it was a character flaw you know i came from you know stable family the suburbs you know i had a lot of advantages there was some dark genie inside me that

35:46

Speaker A

i very much hesitate to call a disease that led me to dope you know i didn't have anyone else who could have talked me out of what i was doing an intervention wouldn't have worked i didn't have uh a child i have a seven-year-old

36:02

Speaker A

daughter now who i never would have had i never would have thought i looked in a mirror and i i saw somebody worth saving or that i wanted to at least try real hard and save you know anybody could find themselves

36:17

Speaker A

very easily in in this situation and you know i look back on that and i think about you know i think about what i'll tell my daughter you know you know that was daddy and no doubt about it but i hope that i'll be able to

36:29

Speaker A

say that was daddy then this is daddy now that i'm alive and living in hope thank you guys [Music] in massachusetts the clambake is a ritual going back to the flintstones before the pilgrims today at the long-standing locals only shooting club

36:58

Speaker A

shoots and veron as it's called in german for the immigrants who first started this rustic fraternity back in 1912.

37:04

Speaker A

club leader ray zarkowski takes me through the fascinating and arcane process of creating an old-school clambake basically we build a kiln with hardwood and stone we burn it down remove the wood we cover it with seaweed and the corn husk

37:23

Speaker A

and we put our clams and lobsters and corn in there like a pressure cooker right now we've got a pig hiding it there also no no no we're gonna pull a tester out right now and you can kind of see what

37:33

Speaker A

we got here let's eat all right first some good chowder and there really is only one kind of chowder new england clam chowder steamer clams lobster corn potatoes it's a pretty luxurious uh clam bank here down here that was amazing everybody's attention

38:07

Speaker A

for a second the opioid education and awareness task force came together several months ago i don't think we realized how quickly this could turn into a crisis for us everybody in this room has been touched by or impacted by narcotics in some way

38:21

Speaker A

the franklin county opioid safety task force is a grassroots response doctors law enforcement led by franklin county sheriff chris donilon addiction specialists and addicts themselves are coming together to find a community-based solution to what is finally being recognized as a

38:37

Speaker A

public health crisis rather than simply a criminal justice problem it's a great opportunity to come here tonight to break bread and look at the successes that we have had so far i think what makes me more proud than anything else about living in

38:50

Speaker A

franklin county is that we will not sit back and wait for anybody else to solve this problem for us we're going to be a model for the commonwealth and for the nation on how we save our young people how we

38:59

Speaker A

save our community you know again it's a change the cities were the place where all of the bad stuff was supposed to happen it wasn't supposed to be nice towns like greenfield right it isn't the image that people used to

39:12

Speaker A

have 20 years ago that it's it's a a junkie in an in an alley somewhere using a needle it's not it's it's your kids it's your neighbors the worst i think is when you have these young young people who break a leg and they go

39:24

Speaker A

to the doctor and they get a prescription for oxy and become addicted to it these are any kid who plays a high school sport it's a horrible circumstance when that happens it it's only started in the past couple years yeah the heroine was around

39:35

Speaker A

the pills were around but we didn't have people dying once you've been busted for heroin that's a hard thing to to live down you gotta get rid of that shame factor so people can deal with it address it and

39:47

Speaker A

get support from the community i feel like we're gonna lose a whole generation of of our young people 18 to 22 is what we're seeing the most the district attorney the sheriff myself the police department are all united this task force has grown

40:00

Speaker A

to over 100 people in a matter six months and that's what we're committed to doing and you know we will do it to the day i die i've lost one daughter to drugs um and you know whatever it takes

40:14

Speaker A

let's start by being honest with ourselves as a nation for decades we were perfectly happy to write off whole neighborhoods whole cities whole generations of young men and women as long as it was an inner city problem an urban problem which is to say

40:29

Speaker A

a black people problem a brown people problem send them to prison into a system from which they'll never return maybe now now that it's really come home to roost now that it's the high school quarterback your next door neighbor your son your

40:43

Speaker A

daughter now that grandma's as likely to be a junkie as anybody else will accept that there has never been a real war on drugs war on drugs implies in us versus them and all over this part of america people

40:56

Speaker A

are learning there is no them there is only us and we're going to have to figure this out together [Music] [Music] you

Topics: Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown Massachusetts Provincetown heroin epidemic opioid crisis Franklin County Cape Cod LGBTQ history food travel documentary

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