Chapter One
Addiction and Overdose
in AmericA
S
unday, May 10, 2015, was a perfect Mother’s Day for Donna Kull of
Hillsborough, New Jersey. “The four of us had dinner together on the
deck: my husband Brian, our son Adam, and his older sister,” she says. “It
was so pleasant—just what every mother hopes for—her grown children
together and seemingly happy, everyone enjoying just being together for
a meal.”
“OvERDOSE DEATHS,
PARTICuLARLy FROM
PREScRIPTION DRUgS AND
HEROIN, HAvE REAcHED
EPIDEMIC LEvELS.”
—Chuck Rosenberg, acting administrator, US
Drug Enforcement Administration, 2015
Three days later, she was at her desk in the office where she worked as
the secretary for a group of busy high school guidance counselors. “The call
that changed our family’s lives forever
came into the office at 7:45 a.m.,” she
says. The mother of one of her son’s friends
was on the phone. “She was nervous, even
a bit hysterical. It seemed like I had to pull
the words out of her. ‘Donna, these kids,’
she said. ‘I just don’t know. He’s gone.’
‘Who?’ I screamed. ‘Who’s gone?’ ‘Adam,’
she said. ‘He’s dead at his apartment.’ I
yelled, ‘NO! No, not Adam!”’
Kull’s coworkers heard her anguished
cry and gathered around her. “I said that
my son had died and I needed to go. They
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