Addiction and Psychology

I have lived and worked in the Appalachian south for fifty years. In the 1960s I worked with rural mountain folk in the mountains of western North Carolina. During this time, I took a master’s degree in social psychology at Appalachian State University. This was a blended degree of Sociology and Psychology. This interdisciplinary degree paired with applied experience in communities with cultures different from my own over fifty years. I learned the importance of culture in counseling as well as psychology. Years later, I met Paul Pedersen [1]. who averred that culture was a fourth force in these fights? During the 1960s and 1970s, I learned the influence of John C. Campbell’s declaration that hillbillies don’t like being told what to do by outsiders. I certainly was an outsider currently as I was a Floridan living in Appalachia for the first time. In 2019, I started to build a university assisted community school in a hill town of 500 people. This community is much different than the one in the 1960s. One of the biggest differences is addiction to opioids.