People USA — August 21, 2017

(Axel Boer) #1

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
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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
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