Interview with Catherine Ross, September 13, 2018

Partial Transcript: It is Thursday, September 13th, and I am here interviewing--

Segment Synopsis: Catherine Ross talks about her childhood growing up in Lexington, Kentucky and in Winchester, Kentucky. She discusses her mother's diagnosis with multiple sclerosis, the subsequent divorce of her parents, and her decision to take care of her mother.

Keywords: Childhood; Lexington (Ky.); Multiple Sclerosis (MS); Winchester (Ky.)

Subjects: Kentucky; Opioid misuse

Partial Transcript: Actually I started out drinking, okay, and smoking weed. But before I knew it, I was doing heroin.

Segment Synopsis: Ross discusses the beginning of her addiction to heroin in the late 1960s, at age 17. She describes using drugs like Dilaudid and Fentanyl (decades before Fentanyl became mainstream). She talks about discovering Bluegrass.org's methadone program, and deciding to try it.

Keywords: Alcohol; Opioid misuse

Subjects: Drug abuse--Treatment.; Drug addiction; Drug addiction and recovery; Drug addiction--Treatment.; Heroin abuse; Intravenous drug abuse; Opioid abuse; Opioid use; Substance abuse--Patients--Rehabilitation.; Substance abuse--Treatment.

Partial Transcript: Well, um, there were two types of heroin basically that, that we got.

Segment Synopsis: Ross describes how there were two available kinds of heroin in Kentucky in the 1960s, "Mexican mud," which was brown heroin, and "China white," which was what she usually tried to get, because it was the stronger heroin. She talks about how the heroin of today is probably not whole lot better than it was back then, but simply more deadly because now it is so often cut with fentanyl.

Keywords: 1960s; Drug use; Hippies; Mexico; Nineteen sixties

Subjects: Drug addiction; Heroin abuse; Intravenous drug abuse; Opioid abuse; Opioid use

Partial Transcript: So, um, one of the things that I think is interesting is, you know, you, you were saying that back then...

Segment Synopsis: Ross talks about how people were robbing drug stores to get prescription painkillers as early as the 1960s, just on a much, much, smaller scale than today. She describes how the one sought-after painkiller in her day was called Dilaudid. She later found out that drug companies eventually put something in Dilaudid that made it impossible to crush up, mix with water, and inject intravenously. Because of this, Dilaudid eventually went out of fashion among injecting-drug users.

Keywords: Dilaudid; Drug stores; Drugstores; Prescription painkillers

Subjects: Drug addiction; Heroin abuse; Intravenous drug abuse; Medication abuse.; Opioid abuse; Opioid use; Pharmaceutical industry.

Partial Transcript: What do you remember about the early days of, um, coming in for treatment?

Segment Synopsis: Ross talks about the early days of methadone treatment in Kentucky, in particular the requirements for receiving methadone. She discusses later on cautioning other people about the addictiveness of methadone, and advising them to try other ways to treat their substance abuse disorder before resorting to medication-assisted treatment.

Keywords: Lexington (Ky.); Medication-assisted treatment; Methadone; Recovery; Substance abuse disorders

Subjects: Drug abuse--Treatment.; Drug addiction; Drug addiction and recovery; Drug addiction--Treatment.; Heroin abuse; Intravenous drug abuse; Opioid abuse; Opioid use; Substance abuse--Patients--Rehabilitation.; Substance abuse--Treatment.

Partial Transcript: So I have a question about that.

Segment Synopsis: Ross describes what it's like to be taking methadone as a stabilizing, maintenance medication. She talks about how it is similar to being a diabetic and taking insulin for maintenance. She discusses her years-long struggle to get off methadone, to no avail. Instead of feeling better, she began to feel worse and experience withdrawal. She describes how she ultimately decided to live her life and stop trying to battle to get off of methadone.

Keywords: Medication-assisted treatment; Recovery; Substance abuse disorders

Subjects: Drug abuse--Treatment.; Drug addiction; Drug addiction and recovery; Drug addiction--Treatment.; Heroin abuse; Intravenous drug abuse; Opioid abuse; Opioid use; Substance abuse--Patients--Rehabilitation.; Substance abuse--Treatment.

Partial Transcript: But I started getting sick not long after I got that job.

Segment Synopsis: Ross recalls being diagnosed with Hepatitis C later in life, after decades of being sober. She talks about how she became very ill, and how her illness prevented her from going on to graduate school. She describes what it was like taking the gold-standard drugs used to treat Hepatitis C at the time.

Keywords: Hepatitis C; Lexington (Ky.)

Subjects: Heroin abuse; Intravenous drug use; Medical care; Opioid abuse

Partial Transcript: Then there were people like me who--you know, I don't really know all the reasons why I started.

Segment Synopsis: Ross talks about the reasons she may have gotten started on drugs so young. She postulates it may have been the trauma from her mother's diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and devastating disability (she was paralyzed from the neck down and could only turn her head). Ross also discusses the lack of treatment programs for substance abuse disorders in Kentucky in the 1960s.

Keywords: Childhood; Lexington (Ky.); Personal trauma

Subjects: Drug abuse--Treatment.; Drug addiction; Drug addiction and recovery; Drug addiction--Treatment.; Heroin abuse; Intravenous drug abuse; Opioid abuse; Opioid use; Substance abuse--Patients--Rehabilitation.; Substance abuse--Treatment.

Partial Transcript: So you were saying your life today is pretty good.

Segment Synopsis: Ross describes her tough round of treatments for Hepatitis C, and her life today after 40 years of being on methadone.

Keywords: Lexington (Ky.); Methadone; Recovery

Subjects: Drug abuse--Treatment.; Drug addiction; Drug addiction and recovery; Drug addiction--Treatment.; Heroin abuse; Intravenous drug abuse; Intravenous drug use; Medical care; Opioid abuse; Opioid use; Substance abuse--Patients--Rehabilitation.; Substance abuse--Treatment.

Partial Transcript: I know you would, honestly though, I think you would be interested in hearing about, uh, uh, being--me being active in the anti-war movement.

Segment Synopsis: Ross recalls the Ku Klux Klan marching in Lexington (Ky.) in the 1960s, pulling the hoods off of one of the KKK members, and subsequently getting pushed down by the police. She also mentions her anti-war and civil rights activism.

Keywords: Civil rights activism; Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

Subjects: African Americans--Segregation; African Americans--Social conditions.; Civil rights demonstrations; Civil rights movements--United States; Civil rights--America; Lexington (Ky.); Lexington (Ky.)--Race relations.; Protest movements.; Race discrimination.; Race relations--Kentucky