By Amy Oakley
Between the Eastern Kentucky hills and the two cities of Morehead and Olive Hill lies a small, close knit community called Soldier.
Although not easily found on a map, Soldier is the heart of several multi-generational families living within the Appalachian mountains. If you ever find yourself in this community, you’ll often see children playing outside, riding dirtbikes and four wheelers as their laughter echoes through the air.
But like every other small community in the United States, Soldier is one of the worst areas affected by the ongoing drug epidemic. National statistics show that one in six adults and adolescents had a substance use disorder in 2022. However, the number seems to be much higher in these small communities across the nation.
Alicia Manier has lived in Soldier for nearly 40 years and has seen how drugs have affected her community. Manier currently lives with her mother, niece and great uncle in her childhood home.
“Over the past 20 years everything has changed. It was great growing up as a kid and living here, and now people you’ve known your whole life you don’t even recognize because the drugs have ravaged this place.” Manier said.
For over half of her life, Manier has struggled with substance abuse. She first began abusing marijuana and alcohol at 14 years old. However, she did not start abusing hard substance drugs until she met her ex-husband at 19 years old.
“Granted I smoked pot and I drank beer, but as far as drugs I had never done drugs until then,” Manier said. “I went straight from drinking a beer and smoking a joint to cocaine, pain pills, heroin, crack and methadone.”
Manier isn’t the only one in her family who struggled with substance abuse. Her two younger sisters, Jillian and Katie also struggled with substance abuse. The middle sibling, Jill, was able to overcome her addiction, however, Manier and her family lost her baby sister Katie due to a drug overdose in August of 2022. Katie Smedley was only 32 years old when she died. Although she did not use such heavy drugs as her sisters, she was killed by a fentanyl overdose from a marijuana joint she got from a friend.
Her death was sudden and unexpected by her family and therefore it has been hard for them to overcome.“I didn’t know how to function I guess. You know there were three of us [sisters] and now there’s two,” Manier said.
After the death of her sister, Manier’s drug use continued to worsen for the first six to seven months. She rapidly lost weight and dropped down to only 80 pounds when she regularly weighs over 160.
After deciding to make some life changes, she was able to get back into a rehab clinic in January 2023. From then she was able to start processing her emotions while nurturing her body back into good health. Manier was prescribed suboxone to help combat her addiction to prescription pain pills and it has been a treatment that’s shown improvement.
However, Manier experienced loss once again shortly after losing her baby sister. On September 18, 2023, she lost the love of her life, Dennis Watson.
Watson also struggled with substance abuse for several years and it was a bond that he was able to share with Manier through their recovery. He was finally on the mend of getting his life together when he became poisoned from a metal rod that was placed in his femur from a wreck.
The poison affected his blood stream and began to fail his kidney’s which led to him needing dialysis several times a week.
Watson died unexpectedly at Manier’s childhood home. Just like her sister’s death, Watson’s death left the family in shambles.
“He was the person that I had spent my life looking for. But, because of addiction, I lost Dennis last September,” Manier said.
When Watson had died, Manier was in California tending to her son who had been in a serious motorcycle accident. Doctors were unsure at that time if her son would survive the night or not. She was only out there for less than 48 hours before she got the call saying that Watson had passed away.
“We were just laughing about toast he burnt in the kitchen two days before he died,” Manier said. “It just seems unreal.”
At this point in her life, Manier had lost two of the most important and closest people to her. Due to the extent of her son’s injuries she stayed in California for the next month and a half until she returned home to Kentucky where life had drastically changed.
“When you come back home it feels like it’s all been a dream. I left in September and the seasons had changed by the time I got back home. All of it had changed,” Manier said.
Before Watson’s death, they were helping raise Manier’s two nieces. She is helping raise her baby sister’s daughter and her great-uncle’s daughter as well. This has been an important aspect of her life as the young girls have both been affected by their mother’s substance use.
“In the long run if she doesn’t have that stability that she needs as a kid, it’s going to affect her and her drug addiction,” Manier said. “It’s mean and it’s harsh but it’s the reality.”
In her family of five, Manier’s father was an alcoholic while her mother never touched alcohol or drugs. Out of three sisters, all of them at one point in their life were addicts and struggled with substance abuse.
“At least two, if not three people out of five are addicts around here. Most of the time it’s three and four,” Manier said.
Through the challenges and losses she has experienced within the last two years, Manier can now finally say she is sober. With the help of her family, friends and responsibility of helping raise two children, she can now provide the stability that she never had growing up.
“There were more bad days then good and now there’s more good days than bad, so I’m doing okay,” Manier said.
