BRADY FLANIGANStaff Writer

The Ada Ferrell Garden Apartments is a cluster of low-income houses on Tullahoma’s east side, stapled together by broken-up asphalt, white clapboard siding, and—in the right light—a thin shimmer of green mold. Near the community center, there is a playground beside a field that sprawls an acre wide. On Tuesday—a springtime eighty degrees with a pine-scented breeze—kids played football in the grass while music mingled with the smell of free hot dogs and soda. Five plastic booths lined the sidewalk, their tables sprawled with literature about addiction. Pamphlets explained insurance coverage for Suboxone treatments, and vials of Narcan stood upright like tiny soldiers.

The night before, Mayor Lynn Sebourn had signed a proclamation declaring April 29 “National Fentanyl Awareness Day.” It tallied overdose deaths—2,720 from fentanyl across Tennessee in 2023—and called for drug education, wider distribution of naloxone, and more robust support for treatment programs. It honored those lost. It urged community action. It called for awareness.

Dustin Ritchie stood on the sidewalk, eyeing his booth through cigarillo smoke. His shirt—red enough to remind you red is the devil’s color—declared, “Say no to drugs.” Drugs are the devil. Dustin is a regional overdose prevention specialist with the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. He’s attended events like this across mid-South Tennessee, sharing bits of his own story—nearly a decade into what he cautiously calls “long-term recovery.”

At Ada Ferrell, everything shone oddly bright, illuminating the strange reality that fentanyl’s life on the black market had spawned a thriving public marketplace too. Because when Tullahoma proclaimed April 29 “Fentanyl Awareness Day,” it wasn’t truly about fentanyl—not directly. It was about institutions acknowledging fentanyl. The city hadn’t invented this day; it merely joined the choreography of a national ballet running since 2022, a performance endorsed by a jam jar of states and agencies from Maine to Louisiana, from the CDC to the DEA.

But awareness is a slippery word. It sells the myth that fentanyl is a feral dog, slipped under the fence two decades ago, skulking unseen, snapping at ankles with needle teeth. Reality is always colder than the stories we prefer to tell. Fentanyl never snuck in. It’s more like the quiet house on the corner, inhabited for decades by neighbors whose names nobody knows, who wave politely every morning from behind the wheel of a Lincoln.

Do you remember when you first had fentanyl shot into your veins? Probably not. Memory tends to fray at the edges of medicine and pain. If you’ve ever had surgery—a knee replacement, a broken collarbone—you’ve likely had fentanyl without ever asking for it. Doctors gave it to you. Most people’s first encounter with C₂₂H₂₈N₂O wasn’t behind some dumpster in a shady corner of town—despite the echo of public rhetoric—but under bright hospital lights, wearing a plastic wristband, trusting the hands that held the syringe.

Fentanyl was conjured in a Belgian lab in 1959, destined to become the synthetic opioid of the future. Morphine and heroin needed poppies, land, farmers, and blood. Fentanyl required none of that—just glass beakers and modern alchemy. By the late ’60s, it was already indispensable in hospitals: fast, predictable, and effective. Even now, fentanyl remains firmly on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines.

But the 1990s marked a shift. Drug companies introduced fentanyl patches for home use. Each patch contained about fifty micrograms—a few grains of salt. Just a little more was enough to schedule a funeral. Yet the patches sold well. Dustin recalled casually, “Guys I knew used to wear eight or nine of those patches. We chewed on them.”

Then came the fentanyl lollipop, in 1998. A lollipop—because what better way to feed the opioid crisis in its elementary school years than candy? Remember, this was when OxyContin handed out plush blue pills at toy drives.

All that pharmaceutical sugarcoating bred a culture that swirled helplessly around opioids. Addiction spiked, though fentanyl itself mostly remained inside hospital walls and pharmacy shelves. Heroin was easier to produce at home—a handful of poppy seeds from Monday’s bagel, a pot, some time, and some quiet backwoods chemistry. But heroin needed land, routes, and labor. Fentanyl didn’t. One kilo of heroin might supply thousands. A kilo of fentanyl could kill half a million. It didn’t need caravans or cartels; it came quietly by suitcase or by mail. It traveled invisibly, carried by whispers. Factories shrank, deaths spread, and soon, the distance from a hospital bed to the nearest street memorial was shorter than ever.

Across from Dustin, Allen Burnette stood behind a table, its black cloth—Coffee County Recovery Court—fluttering in the breeze. Alan’s booth promoted an alternative to America’s favorite needle-to-ball-and-chain pipeline, substituting Coffee County’s overflowing jails with regular trips to a bathroom stall, holding a urine cup. It was justice balanced on a high wire between redemption and recidivism. Alan smiled warmly at kids grabbing little red rubber phones marked with the Tennessee REDLINE, a 24-hour hotline. “And what do we say no to?” he called cheerfully. “Drugs!” they shouted back, voices innocent and high.

Nearby, a woman from ReVida Recovery smiled as children collected brochures like Mardi Gras beads. ReVida offered outpatient medication-assisted addiction treatment, a chain of clinics stretching from Tennessee to Virginia. Only a handful of adults browsed pamphlets about which insurance would cover their suboxone treatments. Beside them, the CR Recovery table displayed laminated scripture cards and sobriety tokens, framing recovery as spiritual redemption—sin and salvation rather than medical intervention.

Standing there among smiling outreach workers and bright pamphlets, one couldn’t help wondering whom this all truly served. The people, of course; spreading word and leaking naloxone into the public was essential—like fluoride in tap water, a quiet lifesaver. The science wasn’t thin. But one can wonder; who really is the fluoride company in this case?

Toward the middle of the event, Alderman Sernobia McGee read the proclamation for a crowd of booths, children, and a few straggling parents. After she spoke, a woman named Erica Hill took the mic. Fourteen years clean. No booth. No branded tablecloth. For the last hour and a half, she’d sat quietly in a lawn chair beside her husband as the wind came and went.

She told her story plainly—high school pills, a lost scholarship, a boyfriend with gang ties. Heroin. Ecstasy. Theft. Jail. No dramatics. No spin. Just facts and a calm voice.

She said, “The company you keep matters.” Not as a slogan—just observation. She spoke about recovery as a barrel of crabs. Everyone pulling everyone else back down. Said most people in your circle aren’t in your corner. Said asking for help is part of the deal. That it’s not about perfection. 

People clapped when she finished. The kind of applause that feels slightly out of place, but no less sincere. Then she stepped off to the side and stood near the booths, not behind them.

Around her: treatment center reps, court officials, church programs, free Narcan, laminated scripture, hotline numbers in bold font. A new kind of circle. Company, again.