A man and woman prepare to take their new baby home

Americans die every day from opioid overdose

America Addicted

October 2017

The opioid crisis is devastating communities across the nation. Overdose deaths are at record highs. How can the epidemic be stopped?

Sarah Beth Marcum holds her son, Hunter, who was discharged after 50 days of treatment for opioid withdrawal in Cabell-Huntington Hospital's neonatal therapeutic unit in West Virginia. Photo by Abbey Oldham.

Chapter 1

The Problem

America’s communities weren’t built to handle the opioid crisis. Across the nation, public services, health care providers and civil servants are overwhelmed by the shared burden of addiction. At their worst, opioids damage communities as severely as they damage individuals.

Saving the babies of the opioid epidemic

One in five babies born in West Virginia’s Cabell County-Huntington Hospital were exposed to controlled substances during pregnancy, and as many as 400 require medication for withdrawal. Sara Murray opened a special neonatal unit five years ago to help care for the babies being weaned off opioids.

Opioid addiction is the biggest drug epidemic in U.S. history. How’d we get here?

Every day brings another story about the depth of the country’s opioid crisis. A rise of pain killer prescriptions from doctors and a pharmaceutical industry eager to boost sales in the 1990s sparked a wave of addiction that shot up by almost 500 percent in the last 15 years.

A pile of discarded needles used for drug injections

Poll: Most Americans think Trump hasn’t done enough to fix opioid crisis

The nation’s outlook for the opioid crisis is pessimistic. Four out of 10 Americans foresee no difference in the level of addiction to pain medication a year from now, while another third of U.S. adults only see things getting worse.

By Laura Santhanam

How the opioid crisis decimated the American workforce

In northeastern Ohio, employers say they see jobseekers all the time who look like “the walking dead,“ would-be workers struggling with opioid addiction. The problem is so great, reports economics correspondent Paul Solman, that it's had a noticeable effect on the nation's labor force.

Fighting the stigma of opioid addiction with stories of recovery

People working on the front lines of the opioid crisis at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation offer their Brief but Spectacular takes on addiction and recovery.

A page of text from William Brewer's book

“Oh they’re on the pills. We don’t really see them anymore.”

Author William Brewer didn’t want to write a book about the drug crisis decimating his state, but it was a topic he couldn’t avoid. Watching the people around him succumb to addiction, he set out to capture the crisis in poetry.

Oct 2

A community overwhelmed by opioids

In Huntington, West Virginia, first responders face burnout after repeated calls, the foster care system strains to support the children of addicts and even the rain sewers are clogged with discarded needles. How can the community cope?

Chapter 2

The Drugs

We're talking about a substance that is poison. It's manufactured death.

— Michael Furguson, DEA

Twitter Chat: America’s unhealthy relationship with opioids

As a part of the PBS NewsHour series “American Addicted,” NewsHour hosted a Twitter chat about opioid use and substance abuse with Dr. Leana Wen and Dr. Sarah Wakeman.

Synthetic opioids are driving an overdose crisis

Fifty times more powerful than heroin, Fentanyl is driving a surge in overdose deaths and ratcheting up the stakes in the opioid crisis. Where does the synthetic drug come from, and how can it be managed?

Explainer: How do opioids affect your brain?

For centuries, societies have coveted opioids for the euphoria and pain relief they provide. But what exactly do they do to your brain and why do they lead to addiction?

How to safely dispose of pain medication

Unused opioid medications are dangerous to keep around your house. They can be fatal if ingested by children and teens often take drugs from their parents' medicine cabinets. So how can you safely dispose of old medicines?

By Dr. Amber Robins

Where do the drugs come from? How do they infiltrate communities? How do opiates alter the minds of users? Understanding the drugs is the first step in understanding the crisis.

Chapter 3

A doctor talks to a patient behind a curtain

The Treatments

There is no single treatment that ends opioid addiction. People who use the drugs and try to stop face a lifetime of recovery. While some rehab facilities prescribe other drugs to ease withdrawal, most state and federal programs favor a drug-free approach. Even in the course of reporting this series, we witnessed recovering addicts who relapsed.

A high school teacher talks to students in a recovery school

At an innovative high school, students get support battling their addictions while they learn

Drug use among teenagers in the U.S. is down, but the mortality rate is rising. We visited one so-called recovery school in Indianapolis that is giving new hope to students battling addiction.

There was no wave of compassion when addicts were hooked on crack

Faced with a rising national wave of opioid addiction, people around the nation are linking arms to save souls. But 30 years ago, it was a different story. Ekow Yankah, reflects on how race affects our national response to drug abuse.

How treating opioids with more opioids has divided the recovery community

One of the most popular rehabilitation methods is medication-assisted treatment where addicts are given the drug Suboxone. But many users say Suboxone prolongs their efforts to get sober, and that it can be harder to kick than heroin.

By Elizabeth Flock

Former drug users work on the front lines of the opioid crisis in Rhode Island

They visit overdose victims in the hospital. They hand out lifesaving drugs on the streets and educate their peers about their own relapses. In Rhode Island, former drug addicts are the most valuable fighters on the frontlines of the war against opioids.

Chapter 4

Oct 2

New Mexico deploys best practices to avoid the worst outcomes in the opioid crisis

While states nationwide have been scrambling to respond to the deadly opioid epidemic, New Mexico has been hard at work with an aggressive response for years. So why have its addiction rates remained stubbornly high? We visit a state caught between two powerful forces ... best-practice treatments … and the international forces supplying American addictions.

Go Deeper

Can Ohio make drug companies pay for the opioid crisis?

Ohio leads the nation in total opioid-related deaths, and it’s the largest of 7 states filing lawsuits against drug companies to recoup the costs of the crisis.

Understanding the science of pain, with the help of virtual reality

Inside the search for new drugs and techniques to replace habit-forming opioids, Miles O’Brien discovers future pain treatments may rely on virtual reality.

In Kentucky, jail is becoming an addict’s last-resort rehab

Despite high levels of drug abuse among the jail population nationwide, few facilities offer drug treatment programs. But the Kentucky Department of Corrections reports that statewide, half the people who went through a substance abuse program in jail say they stayed off illegal drugs for at least a year.

A mother talks to her daughter through a doorway

How to talk to your kids about opioids

Even young teenagers will have heard about opioids and overdose deaths at some point. Pretending that opioid use is not a problem – or thinking that a child is a “good kid” and therefore doesn’t need to hear and talk about it – is a mistake.

By Margie Skeer, the Conversation

How one group of doctors drastically decreased opioid prescriptions

With addictions and overdoses surging over the past two decades, recent CDC guidelines urge doctors to avoid or dramatically limit the use of legal painkillers. In Southern California, a group of Kaiser Permanente doctors has been helping chronic pain patients “step down“ from high-dose opioids with the help of alternative therapies.