From the Editors
编者按
"THE FACT THAT HE’S STILL ALIVE MEANS THAT THERE’S HOPE," SAYS KRISTINA BARBOZA from her living room in East Wareham, Mass.,
“事实上,他要是还活着,就意味着还有希望,” 马萨诸塞州东韦勒姆的克里斯蒂娜·巴尔博扎(Kleys KRISTINA BARBOZA)坐在她家客厅里说到,
50 miles and a world away from where her 31-year-old son Billy sleeps beneath a Boston overpass.
她家距离她31岁的儿子比利在波士顿天桥下离世的地方只有50英里,但如今两人已经是阴阳相隔了。
In Huntington, W.Va., firefighter Larry Kishbaugh—haunted by the countless overdose scenes he has rushed to—has been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder.
在华盛顿州的亨廷顿,消防员拉里·基什博——饱受被他抓住的无数吸毒场面困扰 - 被诊断出患有创伤后应激障碍(PTSD)。
Inside a holding cell at the Kenton County, Kentucky, detention center where drug users are left to detox,
在肯塔基州肯顿县看守所的一间让瘾君子戒毒的拘留室里,
29-year-old mother Kayla Rauck wonders if she’ll ever see her children again.
29岁的母亲凯拉·洛克想知道她是否还能再见到自己的孩子。
It is hard to fathom, and bitterly ironic: the depth of the suffering caused by drugs whose ostensible purpose is to alleviate pain.
让人很难理解而且无比讽刺的是:表面上是为了减轻痛苦的毒品实际上给病人造成了莫大的伤害。
Statistics offer a partial view of the wreckage.
从统计数据中,我们也可以对其有所了解。
In 2016 alone, nearly 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses—roughly as many as were lost in the entire Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.
仅2016年一年,就有将近6.4万名美国人死于药物过量 - 越南战争,伊拉克战争和阿富汗战争加起来的死亡人数也不过如此。
The U.S. is the world’s richest country, and yet its life expectancy declined in both 2015 and 2016.
美国是世界上最富有的国家,但2015,2016两年美国的人均寿命均有所下降。
More than 122 people die every day from syringes of heroin, gelcaps of fentanyl, an excess of oxycodone.
每天都有超过122人死于海洛因注射,服用芬太尼胶囊或者过量使用羟考酮。
Far more come close, but are revived by naloxone, a lifesaving antidote that has become nearly as critical to a cop’s job as handcuffs.
还有更多的人挣扎在死亡的边缘,只不过被用纳洛酮救回来了,纳洛酮是一种能够救命的解毒剂,对警察执法来说,这种药品已经变得和手铐一样重要了。
But numbers aren’t neighbors, and it is far too easy to become numb to their scale.
不过,数字不是邻居,我们很容易对这些数字的规模变得麻木。
We are in the midst of a national emergency that affects every state, every income group and virtually every age.
我们已经陷入了一个影响每个州,每个收入群体和几乎每个年龄段的人的国家危机之中。
While the burden has fallen disproportionately on the least-educated Americans,
尽管文化程度最低的美国人的压力存在不成比例的下降现象,
tens of millions of us are no more than one degree of separation from someone struggling with addiction.
但我们中间的无数人和那些在毒瘾中挣扎的人的差距不过毫厘之间。
As Walter Bender, a deputy sheriff in Montgomery County, Ohio, put it, "It reaches every part of society: blue collar, white collar, it reaches everybody."
正如俄亥俄州蒙哥马利县的副警长瓦尔特·本德所说:“毒品已经渗入了社会各个角落:无论你是蓝领,还是白领,每个人都可能受到影响。”
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