Suicides, Drug Addiction and High School FootballBy JULIET MACUR MARCH 8, 2018
MADISON, Ind. — An hour’s drive from Louisville, perched along the Ohio River, sits the prettiest little town.
Madison, population 12,000, has won awards for its beauty. Best Main Street. One of the top 20 romantic towns in Indiana. One of 12 distinctive destinations in the United States, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The river walk, down from the main street, is a hot spot for joggers and dog walkers and couples canoodling on benches. In the distance, a soaring bridge that connects Indiana and Kentucky often disappears behind a morning fog.
It’s all a lovely distraction from an open secret. On a reporting trip in July, I learned this in the unlikeliest of places: at Horst’s Little Bakery Haus, a doughnut shop with just a few tables, not far from the river.
A waitress had overheard me interviewing someone at the bakery earlier, and asked if I was a journalist.
She checked over her shoulder to see if anyone was listening. There was an urgency in her whisper as she said: “I lost my son last month. He hung himself from a tree in our yard and shot himself in the head. I cut him down myself, with my own hands. So many suicides.â€
She wiped away tears.
“We need your help,†she said.
A Heart-Wrenching Epidemic
Madison, in southeastern Indiana, is at the center of a drug-trafficking triangle connecting Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Louisville. It is battling life-or-death problems.
The waitress at the bakery will tell you that. So will her only surviving son, who graduated from high school in May and talks about how he wanted to kill himself a few years ago. The bakery’s dishwasher will tell you a story, too. Her 26-year-old daughter died of multiple organ failure in 2015, after years of addiction. She left behind a drug-addicted infant.
Even the head football coach at Madison Consolidated High School knows that this town — like so many others across the country, in both rich and poor areas — is going through hell these days, pushed over the edge by a growing opioid problem that’s eating away at communities.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/sports/opioids-suicide.html
