This Florida online paper perfectly sums up the horror that is drugs, particularly bath salts, in the once great coal region of Pennsylvania ..This is a great article, written from looking in from the outside. Dennis Maley, the author, grew up in Schuylkill County PA, or as residents term it the “skook” .. He penned this article about a trip back and a sad view of how bath salts and other hardcore drugs have destroyed the last remaining goodness that was the county.
A few points from Maley:
I grew up in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, or the Skook as it’s affectionately known. It is an area that has suffered through a long history of problems with pervasive drug addiction. In that way, it’s no different than a lot of small, economically-depressed places that have fared poorly in the post-industrial economy. The stories are the same, but for some reason, the drugs are often different, perhaps reflecting the particular brand of desperation most prevalent in any particular geographical region.
He goes on..
I’d been hearing the tales for a long time, but by that last trip home the scope had become unthinkable. One after another, I heard dozens of stories about the ranks of friends and acquaintances who’d jumped to the dark side and become a “salter.” It wasn’t just the usual suspects either. Smart people with good jobs and intact families saw their lives quickly circle the drain before nose-diving down the pipe and into oblivion.
I myself have known people, or known of people, who suddenly lost their way and changed their entire personality due to drugs.. It’s a horrible thing, too. The zombie look that the face gets is frightening..
Another point from the author:
All of it felt surreal. I was without a frame of reference. This many people couldn’t be off the grid, living some underground life as fiends with an insatiable craving for some drug you bought in a head shop with cartoon pictures on the box. Then it happened … I saw one.
She was a formerly gorgeous girl, five years my junior and daughter of a family friend. Her face was hollowed out so deep that it called to mind the Skeletor character from the horrible live-action movie, based on the He-Man cartoon. Her once full lips were now pencil thin and scabbed over on at least half of their surface area. The doe-eyed baby blues I remembered as her most striking feature had narrowed into slits, leaving her with only a permanent expression that seemed to drip with cynicism. Then there was the assortment of scabs and open cuts dotting her face. Her teeth looked like they’d begun rotting in place and her once-curvy body had thinned to the point that I might have missed her, had she been standing sideways rather than facing me straight on.
I have seen the people he is describing.. I have seen beautiful young and hopeful people become destroyed because they made a choice to do some hardcore horrid things.
While you see the coal region close up every day, looking at it from a new perspective always gives you a fresh look.. Reading an account from someone who left before the bath salt and meth fad began here is striking.. Everything that was is gone. Things that were stable are not..
As the Coal Speaker has followed for years, you never know where you’ll find a meth lab in the area.. The Coal Speaker has also began documenting what I feel will be the ultimate demise of the area: Closed malls, schools, hospitals, and hope. Deep down, beyond all the facts and headlines, there is something else happening.
When I was a high schooler at the now defunct Cardinal Brennan High School in the roaring 90s, life was fine. Kids did bush parties—late night beer fests in the middle of corn fields or in hideouts in the woods. That was the test of a teenager… beer. Miller or Coors.. toxic sure… but things changed.
These days drugs are rampant.. And if you think the cops are immune you’re pretty naive to how things work.
There seems to be a disconnect—county leaders don’t realize just how fast and how much the area changed.. They don’t get the immense change that happened. And most don’t realize how much bath salts, meth, and other hard core drugs are responsible. War has come to our towns.. The drug war. And sobriety is losing.
Don’t get me wrong. The drug was has failed. But let’s not forget how it was meant to fail—the CIA has been busy beavers..
I feel like I am digressing.
Back to this article..
Despite your belief about drugs and whether we should jail people for them…there is something very rotten at the core of Schuylkill County.
Which is Worse: A Bath Salt Epidemic or a Zombie Outbreak?
