Photos: Small towns grapple with heroin epidemic

Metro Atlanta

Small towns grapple with heroin epidemic

Photos: Small towns grapple with heroin epidemic

A heroin user prepares to inject himself on March 23, 2016, in New London, Connecticut. Communities nationwide are struggling with the unprecedented heroin and opioid pain pill epidemic. READ MORE: Efforts to combat heroin deaths are on the rise in Fulton County and metro Atlanta.

Traffic moves through downtown streets on March 14, 2016, in New London, just one of the many communities across New England struggling with an epidemic of overdoses and deaths due to the heroin epidemic sweeping the region.

Jackson, 27, who said he is addicted to prescription medication, lies passed out in a public library on March 14, 2016 in New London. Police say an increasing number of suburban addicts are coming into the city to buy heroin, which is much cheaper than opioid painkillers.

Oxycodone pain pills prescribed for a patient with chronic pain lie on display on March 23, 2016 in Norwich, Connecticut. The Atlanta-based CDC estimates that most new heroin addicts first became hooked on prescription pain medication before graduating to heroin, which is stronger and cheaper.

A drug user takes a needle before injecting himself with heroin.

A heroin user injects himself in New London. On March 15, 2016, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), announced guidelines for doctors to reduce the amount of opioid painkillers prescribed nationwide in an effort to curb the epidemic.

A heroin user in New London, Connecticut, prepares his heroin for injection. In a March 2016 article, The New York Times reported that, nationally, 125 people a day die from drug overdoses, 78 of them from heroin and painkillers.

A mother, Kim Sullivan, whose son Ben died of a heroin overdose in 2015, shows off a tattoo while attending a family addiction support group on March 23, 2016 in Groton, Connecticut. She got the tattoo to commemmorate the one-year anniversary of his death. The group Communities Speak Out organizes monthly meetings at a public library for family members to talk about how their loved ones' addiction affects them and to give each other emotional support.

A mother whose son is addicted to heroin shares her story during a family addiction support group on March 23, 2016, in Groton. The death rate from drug overdoses is climbing at a much faster pace than other causes of death, jumping to an average of 15 per 100,000 in 2014 from nine per 100,000 in 2003, The New York Times reports.

Drug addicts in recovery take part in a group therapy session at a substance abuse treatment center on March 22, 2016, in Westborough, Massachusetts. The new 100-bed residential rehab center, run by Spectrum Health Systems, is expanding staff. “When you go right back to the same environment, it’s hard to stay clean,” Jennifer Weiss-Burke, executive director of Healing Addiction in Our Community, a nonprofit group formed to curb heroin addiction, told The New York Times. “Heroin craving continues to haunt a person for years.”

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A heroin user prepares to inject himself on March 23, 2016, in New London, Connecticut. Communities nationwide are struggling with the unprecedented heroin and opioid pain pill epidemic. READ MORE: Efforts to combat heroin deaths are on the rise in Fulton County and metro Atlanta.

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