People USA — August 21, 2017

ADDICTION TO HEROIN

p in a comfortable Dallas suburb, broth-

nd Hunt Freeman played sports and did

hool. As they entered adulthood, they

began to carve out lives for themselves. Hunt,

26, was a charismatic salesman at a local Harley

Davidson shop; Jack, 29, worked as a golf assistant

at an upscale country club. The youngest two of

their family’s five children, they regularly texted

their mom, Kim, a dentist, with jokes and upbeat

messages. But the two also liked to party with alco-

hol and recreational drugs, first using marijuana

and cocaine in high school and later moving on

to heroin. The brothers entered rehab multiple

times, but neither could stay clean for long. On

Valentine’s Day 2017, Hunt fatally overdosed,

which sent Jack into a drug-fueled tailspin. Three

months later he too overdosed. Kim Freeman got

the news on the morning after Mother’s Day, when

she sent another son over to check on Hunt. “I

wouldn’t want anyone to go through what we’ve

been through,” says their heartbroken mom. “To

lose two children is unimaginable.”

So too is the devastating speed at which heroin

and other opioids are claiming lives throughout the

U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control,

drug overdoses now kill more Americans than

either guns or car accidents, a staggering 52,000

in 2015, the most recent year for which statistics

are available. Experts attribute the rising death toll

to increased use of prescription painkillers such as

Vicodin, Percocet and OxyContin. People become

addicted to the drugs while being treated for a

medical condition and then seek out more pills—or

heroin—on the street when their prescription runs

out. “This problem of addiction truly does start in

the medicine cabinet,” says Russ Baer, a special

agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration

in Washington, D.C. “It starts with the misuse and

abuse of prescription opioid painkillers.”

The death rate from overdoses of heroin and

prescription painkillers like Vicodin, Percocet and

OxyContin has more than quadrupled since 1999.

The vast majority of those deaths—approximately

80 percent—have taken place in white communi-

ties, in part, experts suggest, because white Amer-

icans have better access to health care in general

and are more likely to be prescribed narcotics

by their physicians. “Every state in the country

has been affected by the epidemic,” according to

Andrew Kolodny, a physician and codirector of

opioid-policy research at Brandeis University.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before. The

severity of this addiction epidemic is far greater

than the heroin epidemic of the ’70s and the crack

cocaine epidemic of the ’80s and ’90s. The number

of people dying and addicted today is not compa-

rable. This may be one of the worst drug-addiction

epidemics in history.”

For Philadelphia librarian Chera Kowalski, the pain

of the heroin epidemic is something she is living

through every day—both personally and profes-

sionally. Kowalski, 33, was raised by parents who

faced their own struggles with heroin. Though

she says neither has used drugs in many years, she

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—DR. ANDREW

KOLODNY

62 August 21, 2017 PEOPLE

Hunt Freeman, 26

Arielle Gilmore, 25 Joshua Posey, 23 Joshua Ward, 33 Samantha Deihl, 26 Sarah Oliveri, 23 Tyler Fox, 25 Taylor Wayne Anderson, 24

Jack Freeman, 29 Jessica Caruso, 36 Nicholas Waltz III, 44 Nicky Burchett, 23 Robert Gragg Jr., 32 Robert Mapps, 22