A year after our original reporting published, Rich Lord and I traveled back to see how “OD Road” is changing, slowly, into Recovery Road. Here in Pittsburgh’s once most fatal ground for the epidemic, overdoses are dropping, and 1,050 “saves” have been made — almost all by other opioid users — using naloxone distributed by Prevention Point Pittsburgh since 2017.

I had to check that my mouth wasn’t hanging open while visiting Donna Williams. She had opened up from her “raw, get out of my neighborhood” approach to people in addiction to wanting to offer clean needles and health services on her block instead. She baked cookies for the men in the recovery house up the street, she is partnering with a man who formerly sold and used drugs to transform the minds of her neighbors.

Despite the cautious optimism, ripples of trauma are still carrying through families for generations. Here’s what people shared with us.

Today on Overdose Awareness Day, a story of hope is building in Pittsburgh’s OD captiol of Carrick.

Self-described “recovering addict” and former drug dealer Gus DiRenna leads a prayer with a crew of people in recovery as they start work to turn a drug den in the neighborhood into a “Serenity House” for people working on their sobriety and starting a new chapter in their life. The process feeds into DiRenna’s simple formula: people in recovery need a decent room, a job and a community of support. “It just takes not talking at somebody, but reaching your hand out and helping them up, it gets them their hope,” said DiRenna. He opened up the home for a preview open house so that the community could see the transformation the space would make:

“He was facing cracked windows, crumbling plaster, a charred kitchen, a shower wall held together with tape … all the features you’d expect in a 117-year-old, five-bedroom house that ended up on the block watch’s list of drug hotspots. “See, when I look at this, I see opportunity, job training, kids making a little bit of money,” said Mr. DiRenna, recovery director of the ARK Allegheny Recovery Krew. “There’s going to be a lot of laughter and fun going on in here.”“

Read more here about the series of Serenity Houses DiRenna and his crew are building in their attempt to turn “OD Road” into “Recovery Road.”