A story in the New York Times Magazine presents an odd fact, one born of the opioid epidemic that has ravaged Appalachia: "Eastern Kentucky is one of the places where you're most likely to die of a drug addiction but also the place where you're most likely to receive treatment for it," writes Oliver Whang. Drug addiction is everywhere, he explains, and drug rehab has consequently become big business. Nowhere is that more evident than in Louisa, Kentucky, a town of 2,600 near the West Virginia border. Louisa has lost hundreds of mining jobs over the last decade, and the new main source of employment is a company called Addiction Recovery Care. Its role in the community goes beyond rehab: ARC has been buying up abandoned buildings, then setting up businesses (a bakery, a welding company, etc.) staffed by its clients going through recovery.
"It's like ARC has taken over everything," one resident tells Whang, who has visited Louisa multiple times over the last few years for his reporting. "People joke that it's a cult." The FBI also has begun an investigation into ARC over potential health-care fraud. CEO Tim Robinson, who has lived in Louisa for nearly 20 years and is a recovering alcoholic himself, adamantly defends his company's role amid accusations that he is getting rich off others' addiction. But it's a nuanced tale, and another local's quote about ARC might sum things up: "They do not have a good reputation, they do not," says the resident. "But I wish they had come a little sooner, for my brother." The brother died of addiction. (Read the full story, which includes first-person accounts of those in ARC's programs and notes that this type of arrangement is playing out in other Appalachian towns.)
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