Pocatello Doesn't Have a Drug Problem—It Has a Community Problem!

Pocatello Doesn't Have a Drug Problem—It Has a Community Problem!

The Illusion of Connection in an Age of Isolation

If you have lived in Pocatello for any length of time, you already know the feeling.

It is that particular loneliness of being surrounded by people you know and still feeling invisible. It is the exhaustion of saying yes to every half-hearted invitation, of trying to turn "we should hang out" into an actual plan, of putting in the effort to build something real—only to be left on read, forgotten, or rescheduled into oblivion. It is the slow realization that this is not a string of bad luck. It is the operating system of the entire town.

And if you have ever voiced that frustration, you know the response you get back: You just need to get out more. You need to try harder. You need to put yourself out there.

But people have tried. They have tried repeatedly, in every permutation they can imagine. They join groups. They attend events. They reach out. They initiate. And what they encounter, over and over, is a culture of surface-level suggestion that never solidifies into actual connection. A social landscape where friendship is performed in comment sections and group chats but rarely embodied in shared presence. Where the only reliable gatherings are the ones lubricated by alcohol, bound by shared doctrine, or transactional by nature.

This is not a story about individual failure. It is not about any one person being flaky or any one group being unwelcoming. It is about what this place is missing at the structural level—and how that absence is slowly eroding the people who live here.

Because Pocatello, and much of Southeast Idaho, does not have a real cultural or social center. What we have are cliques. We have closed circles built around churches, service organizations, schools, workplaces, and bar stools. What we do not have are accessible, inclusive, consistent spaces where human beings can gather across difference and build sustained, organic relationships. We do not have a thriving third space between work and home. We do not have a robust public culture. We do not have infrastructure for belonging.

And when a community fails to build that infrastructure, people do not simply become hermits. They adapt. They find other ways to cope, to connect, to escape, to survive. Too often, those adaptations become destructive. The substance abuse crisis in Bannock County is not happening in spite of our social emptiness. It is happening because of it.

The Economic Stranglehold: When Survival Leaves No Room for Living

But there is something even more fundamental than the absence of community spaces. There is the absence of time. There is the absence of resources. There is the systematic extraction of possibility from people's lives through a wage structure that makes survival the only available option.

Pocatello has one of the lowest supporting wage gaps in the entire state of Idaho. This is not hyperbole. This is documented fact. People make significantly less here than they do in comparable cities—most especially compared to the Boise area, but also measurably less than Idaho Falls, Twin Falls, and other regional centers. Yet we expect people to live on next to nothing, when the data itself says people need substantially more than what Pocatello offers in order to support themselves with any dignity or security.

The result is a population working not one job, but two, three, sometimes four. Side hustles are not entrepreneurial ventures in Pocatello; they are survival mechanisms. People are not building businesses; they are cobbling together enough income to cover rent, food, and utilities—the bare minimum of existence. And when you are working that much, when you are exhausted by the simple act of staying alive, you have no time for community. You have no energy for connection. You have no resources for growth.

This is not an accident. This is the operating system.

The Poverty Trap: The Cruelty of the Benefits Cliff

And then there is the cruelty of the social services system itself.

More than half of Bannock County's population relies on some form of social services—food assistance, housing support, healthcare through Medicaid, childcare subsidies. These are not luxuries. These are the difference between eating and not eating, between having shelter and being homeless, between accessing healthcare and suffering untreated illness.

But the system is designed with a trap built into its foundation.

If you make below a certain income threshold—let us call it the poverty line—you receive benefits. Food stamps. Medicaid. Housing assistance. These benefits are calculated based on the assumption that you cannot survive on what you earn. And they are right. You cannot.

But if you happen to get one of the low-paying jobs that puts you slightly over that income threshold—if you manage to find work that pays just enough to disqualify you—you lose all your benefits. All of them. The food stamps disappear. The Medicaid is gone. The housing support evaporates. And your new income, which seemed like progress, is actually a step backward. You are now making slightly more money but losing far more in benefits. You are worse off than you were before.

This is called the benefits cliff, and it is one of the most insidious poverty traps ever designed. It creates a perverse incentive: do not try to improve your situation, because improvement will be punished. Stay under the threshold. Stay poor. Stay dependent. Because the moment you try to climb out, the system will kick you back down.

The result is that people in Pocatello are trapped in a double bind. They cannot afford to live on what they make, so they need benefits. But if they try to earn more, they lose the benefits and still cannot afford to live. They are caught in a system designed to keep them exactly where they are: desperate, exhausted, and dependent.

And when you are trapped in that system, when you are working constantly just to stay in place, when you have no path forward and no resources to escape, substances become not a luxury but a rational choice. They are one of the only experiences available to you that costs less than a few dollars and provides genuine relief from the grayness of your existence.

The Architecture of Isolation: What We Have Chosen Not to Build

Walk through Pocatello and ask yourself: where are the gathering spaces?

There are no community centers. No arts programs. No cultural hubs. No LGBTQ+ resource centers or safe spaces for people whose identities fall outside the dominant social structures. No affordable, accessible venues for art, music, theater, or creative expression. No public squares designed for lingering, for chance encounters, for the kind of spontaneous human connection that builds community.

What we have instead is a landscape deliberately engineered for isolation.

The city has systematically removed trees from parks and public spaces, leaving behind sparse, desert-like voids that repel rather than invite. We have stripped the natural beauty and gathering appeal from the places that should be drawing people together. Our parks are not destinations; they are afterthoughts. They are not spaces where neighbors congregate; they are empty stretches of concrete and dead grass where no one wants to linger.

This is not accidental. This is the result of choices—choices about what to fund, what to prioritize, what to build, and what to let die.

And the result is a city where the only reliable social venues are:

- Bars and alcohol-centered establishments — the primary social lubricant for adults

- Shopping and eating out — transactional activities masquerading as social engagement

- Charity events and volunteer work — connection contingent on labor and shared cause

- Church and religious gatherings — community available only to those who adopt the doctrine

- Workplace friendships — the default social network for people who have nowhere else to go

These are not community. These are survival mechanisms. And they are failing.

The Phone Is Not the Problem. The Emptiness Is.

Pocatello has become a prime example of a city where people live on their phones because there is nowhere else to live.

Yes, Americans are more isolated than ever. Yes, phones and social media have fractured our attention and our presence. But Pocatello is not simply experiencing the national epidemic of digital disconnection. Pocatello is experiencing a specific, local catastrophe: a community so devoid of real gathering spaces and authentic social infrastructure that the phone becomes not just a distraction but a refuge.

When neighbors do not talk to neighbors. When people do not check on each other. When there are no front porches, no community gardens, no public squares, no cultural events, no third places—the phone is not the cause of isolation. It is the symptom. It is what people turn to when the physical world has nothing to offer them.

The data on this is stark. According to research from the American Psychological Association, people in communities with robust public spaces and cultural infrastructure spend significantly less time on their phones and report higher levels of life satisfaction and social connection. Conversely, in communities where public spaces are scarce or uninviting, screen time increases and loneliness intensifies. Pocatello is a textbook case of this dynamic.

We have not failed to keep people off their phones. We have failed to give them a reason to put them down.

The Clique Culture: Togetherness as Performance

Pocatello proclaims togetherness while practicing separatism.

We talk about community. We organize charity events. We post about supporting local businesses. We perform belonging in the spaces we control. But beneath this performance lies a rigid, exclusionary social architecture where the default is cliques and the exception is genuine cross-group connection.

If you fit neatly into one of the established circles—if you are married with children, if you share the dominant religious beliefs, if you work in the right industry, if you have the right social credentials—you have access to a functional social network. You have people to call. You have invitations. You have a place.

But if you are single, you are marginalized.

If you are LGBTQ+, you are invisible.

If you are new to town, you are an outsider.

If you do not fit the mold, you are not just excluded; you are structurally cut off from the mechanisms of community life.

The Single Person's Penalty

Pocatello is not set up for single people. It is a partnered community where single adults are an afterthought—or worse, a threat to the social order.

The social activities available to single people are severely limited. Most social gatherings are couple-oriented or family-oriented. The dating scene, such as it exists, is dominated by hookup culture and substance-fueled encounters rather than authentic connection. There are no dedicated spaces for single adults to build friendships, to find community, to create lives that are not centered on the search for a romantic partner.

This is not a small problem. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 50% of American adults are now single—never married, divorced, or widowed. In Pocatello, single people are treated as incomplete, as failures, as people who have not yet achieved the status that grants them access to community. The result is that half the population is systematically excluded from the social infrastructure that exists.

For single people, the options are stark: find a partner (and quickly), leave town, or accept a life of profound isolation. Many choose the third option. Many choose substances to numb the weight of that isolation.

The Substance Illusion: Legal Drugs and Illegal Escapes

Here is something no one wants to say out loud: 90% of Pocatello is on antidepressants and other psychiatric medications prescribed by doctors and pharmacists—the legal drug dealers of our society.

We have not solved the problem of emotional pain and disconnection. We have medicated it. We have told people that if they are lonely, anxious, or depressed, the solution is a pill. And for many, that pill is necessary and life-saving. But we have done this while simultaneously refusing to build the social, cultural, and community infrastructure that would actually address the root causes of that pain.

So we have created a two-tiered system of escape:

Tier One: The Legal Escape

- Antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, sleep aids, stimulants

- Prescribed by doctors, legitimized by medicine, covered by insurance

- Accessible primarily to those with healthcare and resources

- Socially acceptable, even celebrated as "self-care"

Tier Two: The Affordable Escape

- Methamphetamine, fentanyl, alcohol, cannabis

- Accessible to everyone, no insurance required

- Criminalized, stigmatized, deadly

- Used by people who cannot afford or access the legal version, or who have already tried it and found it insufficient

The difference is not moral. The difference is economic and social access.

Both tiers exist because Pocatello has created conditions where emotional pain is the default state. Where loneliness is structural. Where disconnection is the operating system. And where the only relief available—legal or illegal—is chemical.

We have not solved the problem of isolation. We have just created a hierarchy of acceptable ways to escape it.

The Hookup Culture: Authenticity as a Luxury

In Pocatello, authenticity is not prized. Sameness and falling into line are the status quo.

This extends even to how people seek connection. The dating and sexual culture in Pocatello is dominated by hookup dynamics—transactional encounters, surface-level engagement, the illusion of connection without the vulnerability of actual intimacy. People are starved for real connection, so they settle for the simulation of it: a text, a meetup, a physical encounter, and then silence.

This is not because people are shallow. This is because the community has not built the conditions for authentic connection to flourish. When there are no spaces for people to gather and build trust over time, when there are no cultural venues or community events where people can encounter each other repeatedly and develop real relationships, people adapt to what is available. And what is available is the hookup—quick, low-stakes, requiring nothing but logistics.

The result is a population of people who are technically sexually active and yet profoundly lonely. Who have had dozens of encounters and built no real relationships. Who are searching for connection through the only mechanism available in a community that has eliminated every other mechanism.

This is not a moral failure. This is a structural one.

The Businesses We Cannot Keep, The Culture We Will Not Build

Pocatello cannot even keep good new businesses, let alone develop cultural experiences and institutions.

This is not because we lack entrepreneurs or talent. It is because we lack the density of community engagement necessary to sustain anything beyond the bare minimum. A business requires customers. A cultural venue requires an audience. An arts program requires participation. But Pocatello is a community of isolated individuals, not a community of engaged people. We do not show up for each other. We do not support each other's ventures. We do not build on each other's work.

The result is a city where businesses open and close in rapid succession. Where cultural initiatives launch and collapse for lack of participation. Where the only things that survive are the ones that require the least community engagement: chains, bars, and transactional services.

We have done nothing to develop our people. We have done nothing to increase their self-worth, their sense of agency, their connection to each other. We have built a city designed for consumption and isolation, not for flourishing and belonging.

The Pattern Everyone Knows

There is a particular rhythm to social life here that anyone who has spent time in Pocatello will recognize. Someone reaches out—an old acquaintance, a coworker, a person from church, someone you met at a bar. The exchange is warm. They say they have been thinking about you. They say you should get together. You feel a spark of hope, that ancient human hope that maybe this time connection will actually land.

So you reply. You suggest a time. You offer a place. You do the invisible labor of turning a vague intention into a concrete plan.

And then the silence sets in.

Left on read. A promise to "check schedules" that never resurfaces. An apology that arrives two weeks later, if it arrives at all. Sometimes there is no response whatsoever, just the quiet humiliation of realizing you cared more about the connection than the other person did.

This is not a series of isolated incidents. It is a pattern so consistent it has become a local weather system. And the cruelest part is the reversal that follows: when you finally stop initiating, stop chasing, stop performing the emotional labor of trying to build community in a place that refuses to sustain it, you are told the problem is you. You are isolating. You are not trying. You are the one who gave up.

But giving up is not the same as never starting. Most people here have started a hundred times. They have initiated, organized, invited, and shown up. What they learned is that this environment does not reward that effort. It scatters it. It absorbs the energy of reaching out and returns nothing. And after enough cycles of that, self-protection becomes the only rational choice.

The result is a population of people who are technically connected—thousands of Facebook friends, dozens of familiar faces at the grocery store, a network of acquaintances accumulated over years—and yet profoundly alone. They are living in proximity without intimacy. They are surrounded by names they know and starved of relationships that know them back.

When There Is Nowhere to Go

If you do not fit neatly into one of the existing circles, the isolation becomes acute. The church groups function as closed ecosystems where belonging is contingent on belief. The service organizations offer camaraderie tied to labor and volunteer hours, which dissolves when the project ends. The school communities evaporate at graduation. The bar culture offers the illusion of openness, but the connections formed there are often as temporary as the drinks that enable them.

For marginalized communities, this absence is not merely inconvenient. It is catastrophic. Queer people in Pocatello and the broader Southeast Idaho region do not have dedicated community centers, reliable social events, or visible public spaces where they can gather safely and build chosen family. When your identity places you outside the dominant religious and social cliques, and when the broader community offers no alternative infrastructure, isolation becomes structural. It is not personal. It is architectural.

And when the architecture of a city offers no place for you, you either leave, endure in solitude, or find your community in the spaces that will have you. Too often, those spaces are bars. Those communities form around shared substance use. Not because anyone planned it that way, but because alcohol and drugs are the only social lubricants and social venues that do not require an application, a doctrine, an in-group vouch, or a specific identity credential.

This is how a town develops a substance abuse problem without ever acknowledging the conditions that created it. The drugs and the alcohol are not the disease. They are the symptom of a deeper sickness: the systematic evacuation of meaningful social life from the places where people actually live.

The Numbers Do Not Lie

Let us be precise about what we are talking about, because the data is devastating and it is local.

In 2023, Bannock County had the highest drug overdose death rate in the entire state of Idaho—25.4 deaths per 100,000 residents. That is higher than Ada County, higher than Canyon County, higher than anywhere else they measured. While the state as a whole saw 386 overdose deaths that year—the highest rate since record-keeping began in 1999—Bannock County led them all.

Fentanyl and methamphetamine are the principal drug threats in this county, according to the Oregon-Idaho High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force, with law enforcement reporting increased availability of powder fentanyl and cocaine alongside the ever-present meth. Fentanyl alone was involved in 56% of Idaho's overdose deaths in 2023, and fentanyl-related deaths have increased ninefold since 2016. Methamphetamine deaths have quintupled since 2013.

Yes, we are a geographic crossroads. Interstate 84 runs east-west straight through the heart of Idaho, connecting Portland and Seattle supply lines to distribution networks stretching into Utah, Wyoming, and beyond. Interstate 15 connects us to the Southwest border through Utah. The Oregon-Idaho HIDTA program officially designated Bannock County as a priority enforcement zone back in 2017 precisely because of this corridor dynamic. Law enforcement knows the routes. The cartels know the routes. The drugs flow because the highways do.

But here is what the trafficking maps and seizure statistics do not explain: why the demand is so insatiable here. Why Bannock County, specifically, consumes and dies from these substances at a rate that outpaces the rest of the state.

The answer is not that we are a uniquely broken people. The answer is that we are a uniquely empty community.

Isolation Is a Public Health Crisis

Research published in the Journal of Addictive Diseases in 2025 found that adults using even one substance—binge alcohol, e-cigarettes, or traditional cigarettes—had a 17% higher relative risk of feeling lonely "always or usually" compared to those who used none. Another study in the Iranian Journal of Psychiatry demonstrated that drug abusers scored significantly higher than non-abusers across every dimension of loneliness: emotional, social, familial, and romantic. The feeling of isolation is not a side effect of addiction. It is a precursor. It is fuel.

A 2024 study examining hospitalization records found that socially isolated patients had substantially higher rates of substance abuse across every category measured—cannabis use disorder, alcohol use disorder, opioid-related disorders, stimulant-related disorders, and smoking. The researchers noted that while ostracism and loneliness have long been inferred as trauma-linked pathways to substance abuse, the direct correlation is now unmistakable in the data.

Rural America faces this crisis acutely. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, rural areas experience higher rates of methamphetamine and prescription opioid abuse than urban centers, and overdose death rates in rural communities have risen dramatically over the past two decades. One of the most significant factors driving this is isolation—physical distance from neighbors, from social networks, from support systems. Without those connections, people turn to substances to cope with monotony, to escape loneliness, or simply to feel something other than the quiet pressure of being alone.

Pocatello is not a remote mountain hamlet. We have a university. We have industry. We have nearly 90,000 people in Bannock County alone. And yet we function like a fragmented rural community because we have built nothing that holds us together.

The Social Determinants of Drowning

The social determinants of health—the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age—account for an estimated 30 to 55% of health outcomes, exceeding the contribution of healthcare itself. When researchers map these determinants against substance use disorders, the pattern is unmistakable. Social support and social activity participation are consistently protective factors against substance use initiation and escalation. Conversely, neighborhood instability, lack of community infrastructure, and deviant or absent peer networks are associated with greater likelihood of developing substance use disorders.

In Pocatello, we have inverted this equation. We have created a built environment where positive social infrastructure is scarce, where community participation is fragmented into insular cliques, and where the most reliable social settings are the ones that serve alcohol. We have engineered a landscape where the protective factors are missing and the risk factors dominate.

Consider this: among adults entering substance abuse treatment, nearly three-quarters—74%—report having a mental health treatment need, and over one-fifth of those individuals are receiving no treatment for it whatsoever. In Idaho, over 170,000 people ages 12 and older need but do not receive specialty alcohol treatment. Only 6.93% of Idahoans with substance use disorders receive specialty treatment, below the already inadequate national average of 7.20%. We are not just failing to build community; we are failing to catch people when they fall.

And for young adults—the demographic most vulnerable to both social isolation and substance abuse—the picture is especially bleak. Idaho residents aged 18 to 25 report alcohol and drug use disorders at a rate of 18.8%, slightly exceeding the national average of 18.6%. These are not people who started using because they lack moral character. These are people who came of age in a community that offered them no compelling alternative.

The Time Poverty Trap: When Survival Leaves No Room for Community

Here is the cruel mathematics of Pocatello's economy: people are working so much just to sustain the very basic minimums of life—the house, the food, the bills—that they have little to nothing left to invest in growth, in community, or in themselves.

Most people in Pocatello are working two or three jobs. They are cobbling together income from multiple sources, burning themselves out just to stay in place. When they get a day off, they do not have the energy to drive to Boise for culture or to participate in community events. They cannot afford a vacation. They cannot afford to go away for weekends without serious planning, and even then, only if they can get people together—which, in a community of isolated individuals all working multiple jobs, is nearly impossible.

So what do they do with their limited free time? They need something that will take them away from all of it. They need relief. They need escape. And they need it to be affordable, because they have no money left after paying for survival.

Substances fit that requirement perfectly. A few dollars buys hours of escape. A few dollars buys relief from the gray monotony of survival. A few dollars buys the only vacation most people in Pocatello can afford.

This is not moral weakness. This is rational adaptation to an irrational system. When a community offers no affordable, accessible experiences that provide genuine relief and connection, people will find relief and connection wherever they can get it. And in Pocatello, that place is increasingly in a substance.

The Treatment Industrial Complex: Nonprofits as Profit Centers

We celebrate the opening of new rehabilitation and drug treatment centers in Southeast Idaho and Pocatello as if they are unambiguous goods. And for those who are seeking substance abuse relief, yes, it is important and necessary to have these facilities, especially the ones that are science-based, because we know science-based treatment works. Faith-based approaches, by contrast, often lead to further problems, further trauma, and further disconnection.

But we need to be honest about what is happening beneath the surface of this expansion.

These treatment centers are nonprofits, yes. But they are heavily funded through grants from state and federal governments, through insurance reimbursements, and through other funding mechanisms. They are, in essence, big money makers. And like all money makers, they have an incentive structure built into their operation.

That incentive structure is this: repeat customers.

A treatment center that successfully rehabilitates people and sends them out into a thriving community with strong social support, meaningful work, and genuine connection will see those people stay sober. They will not return. The center will lose revenue.

But a treatment center that sends people back out into the same conditions that created their addiction—the same isolation, the same poverty, the same lack of community, the same absence of meaning—will see those people return. They will relapse. They will come back for more treatment. They will become repeat customers, generating ongoing revenue for the facility.

This is not a conspiracy. This is the natural outcome of a system that profits from the problem rather than solving it. The treatment centers are not evil. The people working in them are often genuinely dedicated to helping people. But the system itself creates an incentive to maintain the conditions that generate demand for treatment.

And the most important thing to understand is this: the treatment centers do not address the actual problem. They do not build community. They do not create jobs. They do not reduce the wage gap. They do not address the poverty trap. They do not build cultural spaces or social infrastructure. They treat the symptom—the substance use—while leaving the disease—the isolation and desperation—completely intact.

So people get treated, get released back into the same empty community, and predictably, they relapse. And the cycle continues. And the treatment centers continue to receive funding. And the problem continues to worsen.

This is not a failure of treatment. This is a failure of the entire system to address root causes.

The Criminal Justice Apparatus: Criminalizing Poverty, Profiting from Desperation

And then there is the criminal justice system, which has its own perverse incentive structure built in.

The criminal justice system depends on criminal activity to fund itself. Police departments, prosecutors' offices, courts, prisons, probation systems—all of these are funded based on the volume of cases they process, the number of arrests they make, the number of people they incarcerate. The system does not profit from solving crime. It profits from perpetuating it.

This creates a fundamental misalignment between what the system claims to do and what it actually incentivizes.

The system claims to want to reduce drug use. But if drug use were actually reduced, if people stopped using, the entire apparatus would lose funding and purpose. So instead, the system is incentivized to criminalize drug use, to arrest people, to incarcerate them, to create records that follow them forever, to ensure that they cannot get jobs, cannot access housing, cannot rebuild their lives—and therefore cannot help but return to the only economy available to them: the drug economy.

This is not a bug in the system. This is the feature. The criminal justice system does not want to solve the drug problem. It wants to perpetuate it, because perpetuation is what funds the system.

And the cruelest part is that this system is not designed to address the actual problem, which is not the person using drugs. The actual problem is the community in which the person is placed. The actual problem is the isolation, the poverty, the absence of meaning, the lack of connection. But the criminal justice system is not equipped to address any of that. It is only equipped to criminalize it, to punish it, to make it worse.

So we arrest people for using drugs. We incarcerate them. We give them criminal records. We make it impossible for them to find legitimate work. We push them further into isolation and desperation. And then we act surprised when they return to drug use.

The system is not broken. The system is working exactly as designed. It is designed to criminalize poverty, to perpetuate the conditions that generate crime, and to profit from the resulting cycle of incarceration and re-incarceration.

The Conformity Trap: Expecting People to Deny Their Own Authenticity

And beneath all of this—the poverty, the isolation, the treatment industry, the criminal justice system—there is one more layer of cruelty that we rarely name.

Pocatello expects people to conform. To fall into line. To adopt the dominant values, the dominant beliefs, the dominant ways of being. Authenticity is not prized here. Sameness is. Conformity is. The suppression of anything that does not fit the mold is.

And this creates an impossible bind for anyone whose authentic self does not align with the community's expectations.

If you are LGBTQ+, you are expected to hide it, leave or keep it at one bar.

If you are an artist or creative person, you are expected to abandon that and get a "real job."

If you are an intellectual or someone who questions the dominant narratives, you are expected to stay quiet.

If you are someone whose values do not align with the dominant religious or political framework, you are expected to keep it to yourself.

If you are someone who does not want to get married and have children, you are expected to eventually change your mind.

If you are someone whose authentic self requires community, connection, and genuine engagement, you are expected to be satisfied with the performance of it.

The message is clear: do not be yourself. Be what we need you to be. Fit the mold. Fall into line. Suppress your authenticity and adopt ours.

And when people cannot do that—when their authentic selves are incompatible with the community's expectations—they have two choices: leave or numb themselves.

Many choose to numb themselves. And the numbness comes in chemical form.

The Cycle We Refuse to Name

Here is what the cycle looks like in practice.

You work. Maybe you work multiple jobs, because wages in this region do not match the cost of staying alive, let alone thriving. You come home exhausted. You have no energy to drive to Boise for culture, no local venue that inspires you to go out, no community space that makes you feel seen. You scroll your phone. You watch television. You feel the weight of another day spent surviving rather than living.

Someone texts you: "We should hang out." You feel a spark of hope. You reply immediately. You suggest a time, a place, an activity.

You are left on read.

A week later, the same person posts photos from a bar night with their usual circle. You were not invited. You were forgotten before you were even remembered.

This happens again. And again. And again.

Eventually, you stop trying. The effort of reaching out begins to feel like self-harm. You learn that "we should hang out" is not an invitation; it is a social reflex, empty as a prayer from an atheist.

So you adapt. You find that the one place people actually show up is the bar. The one activity that guarantees company is drinking. The one sensation that reliably interrupts the numbness is a substance. You are not seeking destruction. You are seeking relief. You are seeking connection by any means available in a community that has systematically eliminated every other means.

And then, when you are struggling, someone tells you: "You just need to get out more."

As if you have not tried. As if the problem is your insufficient effort rather than the community's insufficient care. As if you have the time, the energy, the resources to "get out more" when you are working yourself to exhaustion just to pay rent.

It Is Not the People. It Is the Absence.

We need to be very clear about something, because it would be easy to misread this as an indictment of individuals. It is not.

The people of Pocatello are not worse than people elsewhere. They are not lazier, not more prone to addiction, not lacking in virtue. They are human beings trying to survive in an environment that has failed to provide the basic social infrastructure that human beings need to flourish. They are human beings working multiple jobs just to stay alive. They are human beings trapped in a benefits system designed to keep them poor. They are human beings starved for authentic connection in a community that demands conformity.

The problem is not the people. The problem is what is missing.

It is the absence of spaces, culture, connection, and community.

It is the absence of a center.

It is the absence of places where neighbors talk to neighbors. Where people check on each other. Where authenticity is valued over conformity. Where single people are not marginalized. Where LGBTQ+ people have safe spaces. Where art and culture are prioritized. Where beauty is cultivated instead of stripped away.

It is the absence of wages that allow people to live with dignity. It is the absence of a social services system that does not punish people for trying to improve their lives. It is the absence of time—time to build community, time to rest, time to be human.

You cannot expect people to build full, meaningful lives in an environment that does not give them the tools or spaces to do that. You cannot expect people to resist substances when substances are the only readily available source of social connection, emotional relief, and sensory escape that they can afford. You cannot expect people to "just get out more" when there is nowhere meaningful to go and they are too exhausted from working multiple jobs to get there anyway.

What the Research Demands of Us

If we were serious about addressing substance abuse in Bannock County—if we were serious about saving lives rather than staging periodic drug busts on the interstate—we would have to confront an uncomfortable truth. The social determinants of health literature is unambiguous: recovery engagement is negatively associated with transportation barriers and positively associated with proximity to community treatment centers. Social support is one of the strongest predictors of whether someone enters treatment, stays in treatment, and maintains recovery. Neighborhood disorder and community violence exposure are associated with adolescents transitioning from no substance use to frequent, problematic use.

But more fundamentally, we would have to confront the fact that **the substance abuse crisis cannot be solved by treatment centers alone.** It cannot be solved by law enforcement alone. It cannot be solved by criminalizing poverty and desperation.

It can only be solved by addressing the root causes: the economic desperation, the social isolation, the absence of community, the lack of meaning, the denial of authenticity, the systematic extraction of possibility from people's lives.

This means that every time we fail to build a community center, we are building a future overdose. Every time we let a cultural space close, we are pushing someone toward a bar stool. Every time we tell marginalized people that there is no place for them here, we are contributing to the conditions that make substances seem like the only refuge. Every time we strip trees from our parks instead of planting them, we are making our city less beautiful and less inviting. Every time we celebrate conformity and punish authenticity, we are driving people deeper into isolation.

Every time we maintain a wage structure that forces people to work multiple jobs just to survive, we are ensuring that they have no time or energy for community. Every time we maintain a benefits system that punishes people for trying to improve their lives, we are trapping them in desperation. Every time we criminalize drug use instead of addressing the conditions that create it, we are perpetuating the cycle.

The HIDTA reports will continue to document seizures and trafficking routes. The coroner will continue to record deaths. The treatment centers will continue to open and close. The criminal justice system will continue to arrest and incarcerate. But none of those interventions will address the actual disease.

The Real Crisis

That is the real epidemic here. That is the real crisis.

It is not a drug problem. It is a community problem. It is an economic problem. It is a justice problem. It is a values problem.

And until we are brave enough to name it—to admit that our drug problem is actually a community problem, a culture problem, a design problem, a values problem, an economic problem—we will keep burying our neighbors while wondering why they could not just try harder.

People have tried harder. They have tried until they are exhausted. They have tried to build community in a place that refuses to sustain it. They have tried to find connection in a landscape designed for isolation. They have tried to be authentic in a culture that demands conformity. They have tried to be themselves in a community that has no place for them. They have tried to survive on wages that do not allow survival. They have tried to improve their lives within a system designed to keep them poor.

And it is time we stopped pretending that the emptiness of this place is a personal failure rather than a collective one.

The drugs are not the disease. The isolation is.

The bars are not the problem. The absence of everywhere else is.

The phones are not the enemy. The lack of reasons to put them down is.

The people are not broken. The system is.

Pocatello is a city of 90,000 people living like strangers. We have built a machine for loneliness and then we act surprised when people try to escape it by any means available. We have built a machine for poverty and then we act surprised when people are desperate. We have built a machine for conformity and then we act surprised when people seek authenticity in substances. We have built a machine that criminalizes the very desperation we have created, and then we act surprised when the cycle perpetuates.

The substance abuse crisis in Bannock County is not a drug problem. It is a failure of imagination, a failure of courage, and a failure of community. It is a failure to build the infrastructure of belonging. It is a failure to pay people enough to live. It is a failure to create spaces where authentic selves can flourish. It is a failure to see each other, to value each other, to build with each other.

And Pocatello is very, very sick.

The sickness is not in the people. The sickness is in the system. And until we are willing to acknowledge that, to name it, and to fundamentally restructure how we live together, we will continue to watch our neighbors die while telling them to try harder.

Rev. Dustin Irish-Webb