The arts are the first step towards conquering the addiction crisis

In the last five years we have solved the scourge of peanuts. The average person doesn't think “Can't Uncle Sean just pull it together and not have a peanut allergy this Christmas?” We won't be able to truly have deep conversations about what is killing our children, our loved ones and ourselves, until we change the national narrative about what addiction and substance use disorder actually is at its core. He’s still alive The arts can break the national narratives around addiction by portraying the multiple and vast ways of recovery. We’d all rather have Stage 1 Cancer than Stage 4 so the goal should be the same: early conversation, early detection, changing the national perception about what it means to be ill — so that if you're one of the people that struggles with pills, or booze, you do exactly what every person does when they get diagnosed with cancer. At the end of Tony Kushner's "Angels In America," a character says, “We won't die silent deaths anymore.” The arts said that once, meant it, and lives were saved.