A local newspaper keeps covenenant with its community. We do our best to tell the truth.

We hold up a mirror, knowing sometimes the image that’s reflected there won’t be the most welcome sight. Lately some of the reflections have been downright scary and disturbing.

One case in point: Staff writer Aaron McKrell’s Sunday feature story about recovering drug addicts.

People we know — neighbors, relatives and co-workers — talked frankly about their experiences with substance abuse, dependency and the consequences.

They spoke of the downward spiral, the grim routine of feeding a daily habit — an addiction none of them had anticipated or prepared for.

Each spoke about the daily fix becoming their only hope for getting by.

One of them, 50-year-old Patti Wladika, recalled how her morning started with vodka and heroin at 6 a.m. “It hit me and I would be like, ready for the day,” she said.

But Wladika beat her addiction.

And so did 40-year-old Jason Beckwith, and 38-year-old Jamie Christy and Ron Benjamin, 62, among others.

That’s a pretty small sliver of hope to hold onto — a handful of recovering addicts staying clean for several years, when so many around them seem so prone to falling victim to opiod addiction, with more than six dozen fatal overdoses in Butler County in 2016 and on a pace to pass that number this year.

Each recovering addict follows a unique path out of addiction, but they all have some experiences in common:

n Nobody makes it out without help;

n The first step is admitting they can’t do it on their own. This advice should sound familiar to members of self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous since it’s essentially the first step of AA’s 12-step program of recovery: admitting we’re powerless to control an addictive behavior.

This might be an admission that the entire community might consider embracing. As a community, we will not be any more successful than any individual addict attempting to cast of addiction. It’s simply not enough to want to be clean. As the individuals suggested in Sunday’s feature, they all had to seek out additional motivation to improve. For some it was their children; for others, it was to save a career or a marriage. For all of them, it was something greater than themselves.

Would it stigmatize Butler to take conscious steps toward becoming a 12-step community? Perhaps the question needs to be rephrased: Would a 12-step focus stigmatize Butler any more than the 70-plus overdose deaths per year are already stigmatizing us?

The answer should be obvious. And those individuals who have made it through recovery can continue to give us hope and encouragement for what’s possible.