Community Corner
Wayland Woman On Chronicle's 'Opioid Crisis'
A Wayland woman shared her battle and ultimate triumph over heroin addiction as a teen in this WCVB feature on the opioid crisis.
Photo: WCVB-TV Chronicle screen shot
It’s an epidemic, with lawmakers struggling to handle it, and the media showcasing the issue daily in its reports.
WCVB-TV’s Chronicle aired the “Opioid Crisis” on Wednesday, June 17, to put a “human face” on those who are battling, and still struggling with, addiction. The series featured five segments on the crisis, focusing on the flood of heroin into the area and those who battled the addiction.
Up more than 30 percent, Chronicle reports that more than a thousand people died statewide from opioid related overdoses last year.
In the series, Becka Riley from Wayland, who Chronicle describes as a “21-year-old girl from a well-to-do Boston suburb whose high school drinking progressed to prescription drug use and then heroin” is featured.
“With her hopeful smile, 21-year old Becka Riley defies the stereotyped heroin user,” it begins.
Riley tells Chronicle that she initially turned to drugs because she was anxious, and “socially adrift,” so she’d smoke marijuana to dull the pain.
“I just remember thinking to myself, like, OK, if I can do this for 24 hours a day for the rest of my life, I’m going to be OK,” she told Chronicle.
Pot and binge drinking evolved into abusing Percocet, which led to a powerful addiction to an expensive drug. Instead, she turned to the cheaper heroin, shooting it.
Chronicle details Riley’s “long, painful journey.” She’s now happy and healthy and works at a drug treatment program.
