We all had to summon something to get through the past 15 months or so. Call it resilience or whatever you want. But the pandemic invariably hit some people harder. For people living with drug and alcohol addiction, the pandemic presented a massive roadblock.

On this episode of Beat Check, staff reporter Fedor Zarkhin, who’s been covering COVID-19 since before the virus hit Oregon, talks about life in these times.

On the first half of the show, we talked about his recent series that profiles people living with addiction. We talked about their struggles and their successes.

On the second half of the show we discussed Fedor’s decision to head to southeast Portland’s Mount Tabor park on a recent sunny day to chat up strangers. We talked about what he learned and the simple joys in post-pandemic life.

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