Oliver Wang
Appearances
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
ARC was founded in 2008, emphasizing the long-term aspect of addiction recovery. People would be allowed to remain as inpatients for an extended period of time, sometimes more than a year. They'd get counseling, medical treatment, housing, and job training. And ARC would also often employ its patients once they graduated from rehab, even those with criminal records.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
When I first came across the company in 2020, it had around 700 employees, half of whom were in recovery themselves. And the most unusual feature of the company was that it had started buying out a bunch of properties in the small town where it's based. a town right on the West Virginia border, called Louisa. On the surface, Arc felt like the kind of company that was on the right side of things.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
In the past, there hadn't been many options for treatment. And now, here was Arc helping people get clean, providing them with jobs, and revitalizing a town. But when I'd actually go into Louisa and talk to people about Arc, criticisms would emerge. They'd say, Ark is bringing more addicts to town. They're buying up all the property and running out small businesses. They're exploiting workers.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
The company's executive is using the profits to build himself this big house on a hill. I mean, if you go down the main street in Louisa, there's a cafe, a bakery, an art gallery, a little pharmacy, a theater. They're all owned by Ark. They own an auto body shop. a welding studio, a private school. It can feel very much like a company town.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
And yet, I spoke to many people who'd worked for ARC or had gone through their rehab program, and they loved the company and the changes it had brought to Louisa. Over the years, I lost touch with some of these people. A few relapsed. But I kept coming back to two women in particular, named Ingrid and Latasha.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
They'd both gone through AHRQ's inpatient program and were living together and working as nursing assistants. They were these kind of model examples of AHRQ's success as a rehab. Sometimes I would mention to Ingrid and Latasha the suspicions that Louisa was becoming a company town. And they'd be like, yeah, I get it. But they really helped me.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
By 2023, AHRQ was the largest addiction treatment services provider in Kentucky, taking in more than $130 million from Medicaid reimbursements and employing roughly 1,400 people. So I wanted to find out, could AHRQ's rehabilitation program be a model for the rest of the country? And was it really working?
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
Many communities were established as single-company coal mining camps. company towns. When the industry flagged and companies exited the area, high rates of poverty were left behind, not to mention high rates of disability from the hazards of coal mining. This created fertile ground for drug companies like Purdue Pharma to promote opioids such as OxyContin to doctors in the region.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
Then, last August, things took a turn when the FBI opened an investigation into Ark for fraud. And all of the company's success in revitalizing the town of Louisa and helping people like Ingrid and LaTosha was called into question. So here's my article, read by Eric Jason Martin. Our producer is Jack D'Isidoro, and our music was written and performed by Aaron Esposito. Thanks for listening.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
My name's Oliver Wang, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times Magazine. I started reporting this story about five years ago, when I moved to eastern Kentucky during the pandemic. It was a perfect respite during lockdown. Endless hills and hidden streams. The trees are spectacular in the fall. But the region has a troubled past.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
And as we've seen over the past 25 years, opioid addiction rates in Appalachia have risen higher than anywhere else in the country. There are now generations of people who are addicted to opioids.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘Opioids Ravaged a Kentucky Town. Then Rehab Became Its Business.’
But while eastern Kentucky is one of the places where you're most likely to die of a drug addiction, it's also one of the places where you're most likely to receive treatment for it, regardless of your income or background. which is what set me off on this years-long reporting journey and brought me to a local rehab company called Addiction Recovery Care, or ARC for short.