Journalist Shoshana Walter on telling stories of addiction and recovery

With stories that I’ve done before, I had experiences interviewing people in active addiction, and it just always felt ethically dubious to be documenting behavior that was influenced by whatever substance this person was on, behavior that they might not ordinarily consent to me documenting. As a journalist, I’m in this position of power and authority. I’m the one who is shaping the story. Even with someone who is in recovery, who’s not in active addiction, you still need to take care and ensure that you’re starting that relationship from a position of trust.

 I find that starting from that place of total transparency provides this person with the opportunity to make an informed decision about whether or not they actually want to participate in this process, to ask questions, to raise concerns. I find, too, that it helps them feel more confident in my abilities as a journalist, that I have a sense that I know what I’m doing, I know what it entails. 

I think for everyone who participated in this book, the driving force was wanting their stories to mean something, to serve a higher purpose. My hope with any piece of investigative journalism that I do is to raise awareness of an injustice that’s going on in the hopes that it can help lead eventually to change. 

 I was really curious how they actually operate, where people are getting sent for treatment. I knew there was a treatment shortage. This was kind of towards the beginning, middle of the opioid epidemic. I ended up taking a look at drug treatment programs, and I just happened to stumble across this program that was being utilized by courts throughout Oklahoma and Arkansas that had been founded by a former poultry industry executive and was sending defendants to work without pay at for-profit chicken processing plants where they were making chicken products for KFC and Walmart and Popeyes and Rachael Ray Nutrish. And it just kind of opened the door to a topic I had no idea even existed, this idea of uncompensated labor being a form of rehabilitative treatment.

 It made me really curious about if this is something that a lot of people consider treatment. If judges and high-powered court officials and lawmakers believe that unpaid labor is a form of treatment in this day and age in the United States, then what does the rest of our treatment landscape look like? 

Something I really like to do whenever I can when I’m working on a story is approach the subject of the story as soon as possible.  I like to approach the reporting process from a place of genuine curiosity. It’s easier, and often leads to more fruitful conversations with the subject of your story if you can approach them without really knowing that much about them, about their motivations, about what you’re writing about. 

So we contacted the founder of the program very early on in the reporting process, and I think it was very eye-opening to hear from her directly what her program consisted of, what she didn’t mention, what she did mention, what she chose to emphasize, and it opened the door to further communication. So then throughout the rest of the reporting process, we had this open door to her. She actually responded to our calls and our emails, and when we finally got to the point of having our findings and wanting to go through every single aspect with her she actually invited us to visit the program, to tour the program, and to sit down with them and a number of their participants. 

I think it made the story richer, and it allowed us to answer some questions we weren’t able to answer, and it allowed us to include her perspective, which is, I think, very important.

 I wanted the book to explore this really difficult dense policy topic of addiction treatment. I knew I had a lot of ground to cover, a lot of spinach to include. But I didn’t want readers to be bored. I wanted them to get excited about the book and I wanted there to be suspense in the book and drama in the book. And so I thought that the best way to accomplish that was by weaving this dense policy story through the narratives of these four individuals, and then interspersing them throughout.

 There are very few groups in the United States that are more demonized than women who use drugs, particularly women who use drugs during pregnancy, particularly women of color who use drugs. There’s a whole history during the crack cocaine epidemic of demonizing Black women who used crack during pregnancy. This idea that their, quote-unquote, “crack babies” would become a drain on the system. Were destined to be super predators. This demonization of Black women during that time led to some laws that continue to have harmful consequences for birthing people in the United States. 

During the ’80s and ’90s is when we really started to see substance use during pregnancy classified as child abuse and neglect, and that’s not only led to women getting separated from their children and incarcerated, but it’s helped establish fetal personhood in numerous states and has reduced reproductive rights in many states. So these policy changes can have decades-long repercussions. 

For [“They Followed Doctor’s Orders. The State Took Their Babies”], I didn’t want people to read it and just dismiss it because it’s about a woman who used drugs. I really wanted people to have an understanding of how difficult it is to recover in the United States and all the odds that are stacked against you when you’re a pregnant person of color who is trying to recover. 

 Don’t let anyone deflate your ambition. If you have an idea of journalism that you want to do, try to find time, make time to do it. I think oftentimes young journalists are told to pay their dues, and that’s true. You have to start somewhere, right? But also have confidence that you have a particular perspective you can bring to your reporting, and you should follow that instinct and really pursue stories that are compelling to you.