My name's Oliver Wang and I'm a contributor to the New York Times Magazine.
I started reporting this story about five years ago when I moved to eastern Kentucky during the pandemic.
It was a perfect respite during lockdown.
Endless hills and hidden streams.
The trees are spectacular in the fall.
But the region has a troubled past.
Many communities were established as single company coal mining camps, company towns.
When the industry flagged and companies exited the area, high rates of poverty were left behind,
not to mention high rates of disability from the hazards of coal mining.
This created fertile ground for drug companies like Purdue Pharma to promote opioids such
as OxyContin to doctors in the region.
And as we've seen over the past 25 years,
opioid addiction rates in Appalachia have risen higher than anywhere else in the country.
There are now generations of people who are addicted to opioids.
But while eastern Kentucky is one of the places where you're most likely to die of a drug addiction,
it's also one of the places where you're most likely to receive treatment for it,
regardless of your income or background.
Which is what set me off on this years long reporting journey
and brought me to a local rehab company called Addiction Recovery Care,
or ARC for short.