News Article

‘How’s Amanda?’ A story of truth, lies and an American addiction


Saturday, July 23, 2016

by The Washington Post

She had already made it through one last night alone under the freeway bridge, through the vomiting and shakes of withdrawal, through cravings so intense she’d scraped a bathroom floor searching for leftover traces of heroin. It had now been 12 days since the last time Amanda Wendler used a drug of any kind, her longest stretch in years. “Clear-eyed and sober,” read a report from one drug counselor, and so Amanda, 31, had moved back in with her mother to begin the stage of recovery she feared most.

“Is this everything I have?” she asked, standing with her mother in the garage of their two-bedroom condominium, taking inventory of her things. There were a few garbage bags filled with clothes. There was a banged-up dresser she had put into storage before moving into her first abandoned house.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/classic-apps/hows-amanda-a-story-of-truth-lies-and-an-american-addiction/2016/07/23/7be9ee40-3fa8-11e6-a66f-aa6c1883b6b1_story.html