West Virginia has been often described as “ground zero” of the opioid epidemic, largely because of the explicit targeting of the state by Purdue Pharma for its aggressive marketing of OxyContin.

First Responder Jan Rader, long-time champion in the fight against the overdose crisis and the first woman to serve as Fire Chief in West Virginia, disagrees. At the 2025 Syndemic Summit held in Huntington, she said to the crowd “we were just the first to talk about it.”

In this conversation, we discuss why naloxone remains important even as new drugs like medetomidine are found across the country, how the importance of mental health for first responders is growing exponentially, and the policy issues that keep us from adapting to shifting drug trends, among other topics, like how even though we have been saving lives with naloxone, there are people surviving with anoxic brain injuries and we are underestimating this impact as part of the disease process of substance use disorder.

Original music by Blind House. Hosted and produced with additional scoring by Jeremy Kourvelas.

Books mentioned in this episode:

Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari

Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caring Makes a Difference by Stephen Trzeciak and Anthony Mazzarelli

Learn more:

Jan Rader’s TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jan_rader_in_the_opioid_crisis_here_s_what_it_takes_to_save_a_life

Jan Rader in TIME Magazine: https://time.com/collection/most-influential-people-2018/5238151/jan-rader/

Syndemic Summit: https://communityeducationgroup.org/syndemic-summit/

SMART: www.smart.tennessee.edu

LISTEN HERE: https://open.spotify.com/show/5qbzONIr0hlWxiQsPwkXHM