My friend's mom OD'd on oxys a few years back; died on Christmas eve. The biggest irony was that she was a former heroin junkie who'd abused just about every drug on the market - the crack and the meth couldn't kill her, but the prescription pain pills did.

I don't know if you can blame *all* of these problems on oxys. The way Mr Motorhead was describing his hometown, sounds like the way the rest of the country is, because "that's America". There's definitely an element of breathlessly exploitative spectacle to this documentary so far, which is to be expected but also a shame, as I think an accurate picture of how this town works would be both more interesting and more instructive than an editorialized one.

Like for example, a number of Oxyana natives spoke out about this film in protest {1}. In the comments section, one former resident, who is on the pro-film, Oxyana-sucks side of the debate, makes the following statement:

"They [residents] complained drug deals and prostitution were being conducted in the open, even at the McDonalds drive-thru (which I never saw or believed). "

This is actually fairly common behavior. Fast food drive-thrus are a great place to conduct drug deals, and I've personally seen it happen in some of the most white-bread parts of southern Connecticut, a region famed for it's upper-middle-class affluence. As an anecdote, it's no more shocking than saying Oxyana has its own Wal*Mart.

So how bad is Oxyana, really? Have their been any independent studies on the town?


{1} http://wvmetronews.com/2013/05/07/oxyana-gets-bad-review-from-ocea na-resident/

I would have liked to have seen more investigation as to why specifically oxy became the drug of choice in this town (instead of meth, for example), and also heard some more balanced and varied perspectives. This is a fascinating character study, but it raises more questions than answers.

Well, that was fucking depressing. 5 stars!

I grew up in a 'holler' like this in eastern Tennessee back when there were still jobs for working-class people in Appalachia. My home town didn't go the route of this place, but it has definitely seen an increase in people living below the poverty line, as well as an overall decrease in population like most small towns in Appalachia. Once you leave, there's no reason to come back. It's not like when some upper-middle-class suburban kid goes off to college, maybe lives in the city for a while, and then comes back home when he decides to have kids. There's no opportunity in this area of the country anymore, which is a shame since it's so geographically beautiful. I was amazed at how flat and boring most of America was after I left and started to travel a bit. It took me a while to get used to the almost complete lack of atmosphere.

"Movie the-ayters"

Funny accent aside, these are some of the dumbest, most ignorant motherfuckers I've ever seen. "Ah don't know how this whole thing started" Well lady, there are these things called "books" and "academic papers" that explore that very issue!

Yay. My home state.