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The clothes hang from a pressed-tin ceiling in the middle of a narrow storefront — worn T-shirts, tattered jeans, a limp sweater, a dirty work boot.
They seem unremarkable, except for this: They came from the bodies of overdose victims, nearly all of whom had been killed in Maine by heroin.
One woman’s top is stained by vomit. Nearby, a lettered T-shirt extols the buzz of prescription drugs: “Eat All You Can Eat.” And a leopard-spot coat, all bright and splashy, hangs perkily in the middle.
“This was my niece’s,” Marty O’Brien says as he touches the jacket, part of an art exhibit called “The Poppy Fields of Maine.”
O’Brien is the founder of Grace Street Services, a substance-abuse recovery center in one of the poorest cities in New England. It is typical in many respects, with counseling and medication to curb the craving for heroin.
But what separates Grace Street is its philosophy that visual art, poetry, and writing about one’s journey — from the torturous past to a hope for the future — can help drug users navigate the winding road to a better life.
“We’re saying, let’s start writing our own story,” O’Brien said. “We ask, if they could have the opportunity to build a new life, what would that look like?”
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Links:
Boston Globe | Grace Street Recovery Services | Grace Street’s Facebook
