On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane

by Emily Guendelsberger

I can’t overemphasize the presence of the opioid crisis in the Louisville area. It’s everywhere—from the front page of every newspaper to the billboards along my commute to the bed I sleep in. It used to belong to Katie’s younger brother, who’d gotten addicted to Oxycontin after a difficult brain surgery and made the classic transition to heroin after his prescriptions ran out. His room was only available for me because he was in jail after a years-long downward spiral. The pain of the situation was omnipresent in the McPherson household. It seemed obvious to me that SDF8 ran on painkillers. And if two Advil could quickly turn into four Advil, how quickly could four Advil turn into codeine, Vicodin, Oxycontin, heroin? Maybe Louisville had been hit so hard by opioids because, with all these warehousing jobs, there was just more… pain here.