“My first thought was the day I knew was coming, is here,” said Sherry Petrowski.
In 2014 her son, Chris Sullivan, died of an opioid overdose. “When you’re the mother of an addict every time a phone rings, every time you walk away from your child you feel like it’s the last time,” explained Petrowski. She wants to see the crisis come to a halt.
“It’s a true litany of despair and grief and death that this crisis has wrought on this community,” said Zac Talbott. He is working to open an opioid treatment facility in Maryville that he hopes will help hundreds of people. “I’ve lost count long ago even just standing here thinking about the number of lives we’ve lost,” said Talbott.
This will be the first facility in the East Tennessee treatment region that will have all three of the FDA-approved opioid treatment medications, and one of the only locations where all medications will be dispensed on site.
Source: WVLTV