Us & Them Encore: The Stigma of Sobriety

America’s overdose crisis keeps changing shape. In recent years, provisional CDC data have shown a sharp national decline in overdose deaths — even as public officials warn the street drug supply remains volatile and some communities see signs of a rebound. That uncertainty is also reshaping the recovery world — especially around opioids. Some people find abstinence-based recovery works best. Others rely on medication-assisted treatment (MAT), using prescribed medicine like methadone or buprenorphine to stabilize a person and reduce the risk of relapse. But MAT has long divided the recovery community, fueling a stigma around a deceptively simple question: When is someone sober? In this encore episode of Us & Them , Trey Kay visits the Clarksburg Mission in Clarksburg, West Virginia — a Christian-centered recovery facility where people pursue different paths toward sobriety — and where debates about medication, morality, and survival are never abstract.

You can listen to Us & Them Encore: The Stigma of Sobriety online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Us & Them Encore: The Stigma of Sobriety is an episode from Us & Them by Trey Kay.

This episode is 53:03 long.

This episode was published on Feb 26, 2026.

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