The numbers in the opioid epidemic stagger the mind. And not just the people who have died, running something like 130 a day in the United States.
The sheer tsunami of prescriptions also defies comprehension, like the pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia that distributed 12 million opioid pain pills in three years--in a town of 382 people. Finding out why won a Pulitzer Prize for journalist Eric Eyre.
He recounts his newspaper work in longer form in the book Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic. The author visits with details of his work, and an update on how COVID-19 complicates the recovery process for people addicted to opioids.