overdose peters township school district

They palled around, spent nights at each other’s homes, played ball together. They were a few years apart in age, but connected in some way. Peter Catholic School, or early in one of two public high schools. Eight were good friends, or friends of friends, a typical crowd that coalesced by eighth grade at St. The dead are nearly all boys and nearly all White. Each teen seemed to follow his or her own path to substance use, propelled by trauma, depression, boredom, hopelessness or poor self-esteem - lost to the easy availability of drugs and a susceptibility to addiction. There is no single explanation for the run of deaths. In one family, loss piled upon tragic loss until almost no one was left. Here, drugs worked their way inexorably through a group of friends, year after year, for nearly a decade. In a nation that suffered more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021 alone, there are many Greenvilles - places where the powerful opioid fentanyl and other drugs have produced clusters of overdose deaths, or picked off victims one at a time. “It was almost like a generation that went to war didn’t come back,” said J.D. More of their peers became addicted or overdosed but managed to survive. But beginning with Jackson’s death that day, a group of at least 16 young men and women who grew up together in this small eastern North Carolina city would succumb to overdoses of opioids and other drugs over nine years. 2, 2013, was not the day the drug epidemic reached Greenville. You learn where some days you’re an emotional wreck and others, you don’t think about them as much.

“I hate the saying, ‘Everything happens for a reason,’ or ‘It’ll get easier,’ because it doesn’t,” Ellie said. He had four anti-anxiety medications in his blood.

Jackson, shown in the 2013 photo on the right before being taken off life support, choked on vomit. Madeline Gray For The Washington Post Fran Laughinghouse, left, lost both her sons to drug-related deaths.

Overdose peters township school district