This brings me back to GR and a bit of info I found on him. It had made me wonder if he didn't dabble in other areas other than pot. Maybe not be a big time dealer, but a user, and would know where to get those items.
I ran across something and I'm not sure how to go about wording it, so I'll put it like this;
Heroin is getting rampant in our little foothills town. We lost four young people over the course of one weekend and another, at last check, was fighting for their life, and may never be mentally "right" again. One of the ones who died had been in and out of rehabs and been doing pretty good but, broke down and used w/a friend. She's dead now. I have heard folks say that the dealer, if located, should be tried for murder. I've heard people imply, in situations like this, when a young person dies from an o.d., that they should let family take care of the person who sold it to their child. I recently ran across something that could have potentially tied GR to a family that lost a loved one to an o.d. So, I've wondered, if GR, who we now know for sure enjoyed harder drugs, could have used really poor judgement, and gotten something for someone, and that someone died, and if so, could family have sought revenge.
From the article above:
"The only one among those who died who had any drug charges to speak of was Gary Rhoden. He was arrested in Russell, Ky., in December 2011 after he and his stepfather were caught using drugs in a car in the parking lot of a Dunham’s sporting goods store.
The stepfather, according to the police report, was cooking ground-up prescription drugs on the bottom of a Pepsi can when officers approached the vehicle, and he admitted that he and Gary Rhoden had already injected some and were preparing more. Gary Rhoden was in passenger seat and refused to show police he hands when ordered to do so. Officers pulled him from the car and forced him to the ground.
According to court records, Rhoden had Xanax in the pocket of his jeans and other drug paraphernalia. He was charged with drug paraphernalia, public intoxication of controlled substances, and possession of controlled substances but after serving three days in jail, the remainder of a 90-day jail sentence was suspended after he successfully completed a probationary period."
This is super interesting to me because this is in a place that I am very familiar with (Russell, KY is in Greenup County where Gary was from). The sporting goods store is in a fairly old strip mall type with one of those huge parking lots that stays mostly empty aside from the people who go into Dunhams (which isn't much thanks to the Dicks they put in up the road)....it is on US 23 (a road I'm sure you're familiar with) and connects just about everything up here.
I would imagine Russell/Flatwoods would be a fairly easy place to find something, albeit you'd have to know the right people because these are SMALL towns-population 6,000ish to maybe 9000 at most, but I am more willing to bet they were in Ashland, Kentucky (if they didn't have it with them beforehand), which is rampant with drugs at the moment,(from heroin, to run of the mill opiates to bath salts/flakka). That Dunhams sits almost directly on the border of Russell/Ashland, so it's more than likely that's where they were coming from...or they'd met someone there at that parking lot and didn't leave before they took care of business. It's not unusual to hear about people being arrested shooting up in cars in our area these days. Once they cracked down on the pill mills and the FL-KY pipeline that was hot business back in my day...heroin seemed to make a mad rush to the front as the number one. Well, heroin and meth, that is.
Full disclosure here....I am a recovering addict. I didn't mention it before because I didn't know that any of these guys had ever been convicted of anything more than some pot or a DUI. So, if it helps, I can definitely provide some info on this. If there is one thing I know around my area, it's opiates and the addiction that comes with it. I have been clean for almost 8 years now, but I was full on junkie and knew a lot of not so nice people back then, some of which I still see around town or out and about....or on the news.
I know these kinds of people because I was one. If the mods need approval on this one, this I can prove if only for the sake of providing some kind of insight about this kind of thing. I took Suboxone to get clean and still have the final box I had filled, along with a stack of medical records the size of my head, filled to the brim with clean urine screens.
If GR had a legit addiction to opiates of any kind, I wonder what method he used to get clean? In 2011, the nearest Methadone clinic was in Huntington, WV....but now there's one right in Ashland. I don't know if there's anything down by Pike, but if he was on Methadone, he'd pretty much have to dose daily and get up quite early in the AM to be at the clinic. I know some places will give out take homes if your record is good, but my understanding is that they're pretty hard to get.
There ARE Suboxone clinics in Ashland, Ky, Ironton, OH and Portsmouth, Oh that I know of right off the top of my head. Most of these places prescribe two weeks at a time and require a weekly group counseling session.
Or...he could have still been using or just gone cold turkey. It's hard to say.
Sorry for the blabbering on. I may have missed it before, but this is the first I've heard of anything addiction-wise, and I'm pretty passionate about it!
