Table of contents for March 5, 2018 in TIME Magazine

‘If there was a terrorist that showed up in Montgomery County today and shot 50 people, or 25 or 10 for that matter, this community would be in an uproar. There would be an army here trying to stop it. That’s exactly where we are with opioids. But who’s showing up to stop it?’BRUCE LANGOS, executive director of the Criminal Intelligence Center at the Montgomery County sheriff’s office in Dayton, Ohio. Langos, a retired executive, has been using data analysis to help local law enforcement address the crisis…

‘If your family member is struggling with addiction, love them. Don’t fight them, don’t judge them. And for the love of everything holy, pray for them.’ANGELA DAVIS, a social worker with Lily’s Place, a facility that cares for opioid-exposed babies in Huntington, W.Va.…

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‘I got in a car accident and was in the hospital for three or four months. At first, I took it for the pain as prescribed, as needed. I started to like the buzz so I began taking more than I was supposed to. Then a family member introduced me to heroin, and I actually cried at first because I didn’t feel any pain. All it takes is one time.’CASSAUNDRA BLASINGAME, from New London, Ohio ‘It’s not just the guy who’s never worked a day in his life. It’s airline pilots. It’s teachers. I’m sure there’s law enforcement, firemen out there hooked on it. It’s Joe Citizen that is dying.’GUST ANDREW TEAGUE II, a deputy sheriff in Montgomery County, Ohio, one of the hardest-hit areas in the country…

I HAD A CAREER IN SALES IN THE AUTOMOBILE business. I was making a lot of money, upwards of a $100,000 a year. I always messed around with, you know, drinking, pot, but it never truly affected me. Then I started up with the OxyContins. Opiates are a whole different ball game. You don’t really get hung over from them. It’s an amazing feeling, that warm hug from Jesus. It started as a once-in-a-while thing. But I began telling myself, “Well, if I can feel this good on Friday and Saturday, why shouldn’t I feel this good on Tuesday and Wednesday?” And then the price started going up, and all of a sudden they’re $80 a pill. At this point, I’ve got a six- or seven-pills-a-day habit. I wouldn’t…

FENTANYL’S A SYNTHETIC SUBSTANCE. It’s made in superlabs in China and Mexico. It’s so much more addicting than heroin, and it’s easier to produce. The problem is that it’s so powerful it’s killing people. You have dealers literally sitting at their kitchen table stuffing a gel capsule full of fentanyl and whatever they can put in it to stretch the product. They call them testers. They’ll put whatever product they want in the gelcap. If they can get their hands on carfentanil, which is 100 times stronger than fentanyl, they’ll use it as a tester. And they’ll give you some free samples to see how you like them. Unfortunately it’s so addicting that if you die, addicts want to go to that dealer to get that more potent compound.…

I thought I was the bad guy, the one who ran through everyone’s life, blew through everything. Finally, one day I had what we often refer to as the moment of clarity, where I admitted to my significant other that I had a problem, and I did not know what to do. I fully expected her to sever all ties and no longer speak to me. But she said, “Jason, I want you to get the help that you deserve.” And that broke down the barrier to treatment, to recovery. I had to come to terms with the shame and guilt surrounding the wreckage of my past. The lives I had impacted, the wasted time. In recovery I realized that I can use the most disgraceful, embarrassing moments in…

BILLY STARTED USING SUBSTANCES AT a young age. He was probably around 12, 13 when he started dabbling in smoking pot, drinking alcohol. Then he started with opiates. As a parent, you don’t learn about these things, a lot of times, until after they’ve happened. He was in and out of treatments, in and out of jail. He quit high school when he was about 16. It really hasn’t been until more recently that I’ve kind of come out in terms of talking about Billy. Because for so long, I did feel embarrassed. People would ask me, you know, “Oh, so how many kids do you have? What are they doing now in their lives?” And it was almost like, “Ugh.” But more recently I’m like, “Yeah, I have…

DAYTON IS ROUGH. I’VE BEEN HERE FOR 11½ YEARS, AND it’s declined. The poverty level’s pretty bad. But opioids reach every part of society: blue-collar, white-collar, everybody. It’s nonstop. It’s every day. And it doesn’t seem like it’s getting any better. You get a thick skin over time—either you get it, or it’s going to eat you alive eventually. You kind of become cold to seeing somebody overdose. As an officer, you bury it away. A lot of us do that. That’s how we cope. Your emotional attachment to that person that you don’t know is you don’t have one. It becomes easy to talk about the drug and not talk about the person, to say, “Yeah, just another one.” But seeing the families that are affected, actually seeing…

AS MY DAUGHTER STARTED GETTING older, in high school, the boyfriend thing came around. She ended up meeting one of these guys who was a user. And of course, once she hit 18, it was kind of difficult to give her direction. Anytime I confronted her, she would deny it. I mean, she was always telling me, “Dad, I made a mistake. I don’t need help. I tried it a few times. I’m going to stay away from it.” That was her constant: “Trust me, Dad, I can fight this. I can beat it.” I remember telling her one day, “I’m to the point that I’m preparing myself for getting a bad phone call about you.” So I kind of prepared myself for it. You can be as mentally…