Overdose deaths on track to reach an alltime high

Matthew Davidson was beating his heroin addiction. The 31yearold was attending group recovery meetings. He had a restaurant job he liked. He was a doting uncle to a baby nephew.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. Davidson lost his job. He started staying home alone in his apartment near Georgetown, Ky. — depressed and yearning for his recovery support group that had stopped gathering in person, said his cousin Melanie Wyatt.

On May 25, his girlfriend came home to find him dead of a fentanyl overdose.

Davidson was part of a surge in overdose deaths that hit Kentucky this spring. May was its deadliest month for overdoses in at least five years. At the end of August, the state had seen almost as many overdose deaths as it had in all of 2019.

It is not alone. National data is incomplete, but available information suggests U. S. drug overdose deaths are on track to reach an alltime high. Addiction experts blame the pandemic, which has left people stressed and isolated, disrupted treatment and recovery programs, and contributed to an increasingly dangerous illicit drug supply.

Before the coronavirus even arrived, the U. S. was in the midst of the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in its history, with a record 71,000 overdose deaths last year.

This year’s tally likely will surpass that, according to preliminary death data from nine states and national data on emergency responses to reported drug overdoses.

National numbers take months to tabulate, because tests and death investigations can take time even when medical examiners offices are not stretched thin by a pandemic.

Still the latest numbers show deaths trending up: Nearly 74,000 overdose deaths were counted from April 2019 to March 2020, up from the 68,000 reported for the comparable period one year earlier.

“The new CDC data confirms our fears that COVID19 is exacerbating the already devastating overdose crisis,” said Jules Netherland, who oversees research at the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that focuses on illicit drug use issues.