Impact of the Suburban Heroin Crisis

Sprawling. Safe. Serene. The suburbs. Not the kind of place you'd expect to find. An epidemic. Leah Deland is desperate for a fix. So desperate for heroin, she's stealing from her family. What did you grab to take to the pawn shop? Just a weed eater. I'm going to get it all back out tomorrow, though. How much money can you get for it? You put it in the back of the car? Forty dollars. Which probably costs a couple hundred. Goodbye. And will you buy $40 worth of heroin? Unless I need some gas. I follow her as she drives away from the suburban home where she grew up. She races through the rain to get to the pawn shop before it closes. My anxiety is horribly high. It's just a really scary feeling. She arrives just in time. My whole body just aches, and you have, like, chills, and you puke. It's like every symptom you could possibly think of. It's not the first time she's stolen from her family. She pawned her father's leaf blower already this morning, just to get high. 24-year-old Olivia Deland is typical of the new face of the heroin epidemic. Young, well-off, and white. When you wake up, do you immediately think, I gotta go score some heroin? That's the first thought. Like, I don't do anything else until I do that. That's number one priority. Olivia grew up in Mainville, one of the sleepy suburbs in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky overshadowed by the Cincinnati skyline. I grew up in like a good home, but I mean I had a good childhood and I don't know why it's such a problem now. I mean it's everywhere now. There's like, I mean there's so many people from my school around this area that do it that I had no idea until recently and it's just, I don't know, it's crazy like. After leaving the pawn shop, she scores drugs with her friend Miranda Warmwald. They can't wait to get high, so they pull over in this leafy, suburban neighborhood to shoot up in the car. What kind of job do you have, Mandy? I was a preschool teacher for four years, and I stopped because I didn't want to teach kids while I was in high school. Is there a belt back there? Does it hurt? No. What's it like when you get a hit of heroin? It's amazing. I mean, it's just like a relief. I mean, so many things can be wrong, but you feel like everything's just perfect. It's like on your wedding day, like that feeling that you get, it's like that every time. And how long will that last for you? It honestly doesn't last very long. The first hit, the rush, is what people chase after more than anything. That rush that you first get when you shoot up. And then after that, it's like, most people just feel normal, honestly. Back in 2013, Olivia's life had already descended into drug addiction. She was just 18 years old when she started using heroin. The first time I ever tried heroin was here at this house. I remember like the exact day, clearly still. Just like the smells of the house, everything. I remember my mom had had the carpet cleaned that day, so the whole house smelled like just fresh. And I remember just being in my room, and out of nowhere my older brother walks in, and... He just asked, hey, do you want to try this? And I don't know what came over me, but I had no questions in my mind. I was just like, yeah. She told her boyfriend Tyler she had tried heroin. I had told him about it. I had told him I tried it. And he was really, really mad at me. Very mad. And I just, I was like, I'm sorry Tyler, but I was like, I gotta tell you how great this stuff is. Like it was amazing. Like you have no idea, like. And then a couple days later, he was like, well I want to try it. Olivia stopped using when she became pregnant. She gave birth to her daughter, Callie, in 2010, then quickly started up again. Snorting at first. When we caught up to her a year later, heroin addiction had taken over her life. I started injecting pretty fast after I started up again, yeah. And that's when it really went downhill. When you say go downhill, what do you mean? I started using every day. I needed it. Like, my body physically needed it. What's your habit now, cost-wise? Cost-wise, I probably spend like $100 a day. Olivia arrives for our interview after getting high. Then she's obsessed with arranging a drug deal. She constantly checks her phone to see if her dealer has texted her. Did he text you back? Not yet. Are you getting anxious about it? Yeah. Drug that was once an inner-city problem is hitting suburban America and hitting it hard. 911, where's your emergency? My brother, I think he's ODN. I just found him on the floor gas and prayer. Heroin overdose, this one's very rare. are now happening at an alarming rate. Can I dispatch fast? In Collington, Kentucky, on Philadelphia Street in McDonald's bathroom, in the men's room, there's a woman that supposedly overdosed. Just last October, hospitals in three small Kentucky cities suburbs outside Cincinnati treated 10 overdoses in a 48-hour period. Two of them were fatal. The death rate from heroin overdoses across the country nearly quadrupled between 2000 and 2013. That's one of our spots where we've had a lot of activity. On the front lines, Spike Jones, the police chief of Covington, Kentucky. The type of people that we're seeing that are drug addicted aren't people just passed out. in alleyways, they're people from suburbs, they're people from very successful families. They're not what you would imagine. The number of heroin users across the country soared 82 percent between 2007 and 2013 to 681,000. And how much of your time now is spent focused on heroin? A lot. Chief Jones works with crime scene investigator Don Bayless and they show me some of the heroin that's been seized. during recent police arrests. What would something like this cost a heroin user? Anywhere between $15 and $20. You know, that can be cooked down, put into a syringe, and shot up. So it's a relatively inexpensive price for a long high. We catch people quite often in their car ready to shoot up. They get caught all the time. We've found people with their kids in the car seats in the back. And mom and dad in the front seat passed out from shooting up. The number of people who died of heroin overdoses in Ohio nearly tripled in just three years between 2010 and 2013. While in Kentucky, the number of deaths over that same period rose nearly 500%. Heroin addiction isn't just plaguing the suburbs around Cincinnati. The drug is also infesting suburbs around the country, like here in New Jersey. I think it would be hard for a lot of people to think that in a bucolic, beautiful, suburban neighborhood, you know, like this one, that there would be... Actually a big drug problem. Most people, when they think of heroin, they think of inner city communities, they think of the heroin epidemic that hit the country in the 1970s and that disproportionately affected. people who were poor and non-white. Dr. Andrew Kolodny is the chief medical officer at Phoenix House, a non-profit drug treatment organization. The heroin crisis we're dealing with today is affecting suburbs and rural areas. It's much more severe than the epidemic we had in the 1970s. So we're dealing with the worst drug epidemic in United States history. Back in 2000, it was older black people who had the highest rate of heroin overdose. But by 2013, young white people had the highest rate. Dr. Kolodny says the epidemic began shifting a decade ago in the Appalachian region of the country. It also began hitting New England early, spreading into the mid-Atlantic states and the Midwest. While heroin is also hitting other parts of the country, These regions are all now heroin hotspots. Heroin's move to the suburbs began with the explosion of prescription pain pills, pushed hard by drug companies. It's important to remember that you have to try to help yourself by finding a doctor that understands pain management. With the right doctor, And the right medication in place, many patients can live a complete and normal life. Sales of prescription painkillers quadrupled between 1999 and 2010. Less than 1% of patients taking opioids actually become addicted. About 4 out of 5 heroin users today became addicted to opioids, to opioid painkillers, before they ever used heroin. Heroin is also an opioid and the most addictive of all illegal drugs. As authorities cracked down on prescription painkillers, the pills got harder to get and more expensive. At the same time, heroin was becoming more pure. That made it a potent alternative you could snort instead of inject. Well, a young person who gets addicted to painkillers, they'll switch to heroin because a $10 bag of heroin We'll do exactly what a $30 pill of oxycodone would do. Drug traffickers began targeting the suburbs and rural areas, searching for new clients. The opioid epidemic is hitting middle-class white families and communities because it's in white households that you're more likely to find painkillers in the medicine chest. Sarah Cordenbrock grew up in a bucolic setting just outside the Kentucky suburb of Covington. Her family, solidly middle class. So, how many animals do you have? Um, let's see, we have five goats, a pig, one mini horse, um, a donkey, and three Tennessee walking horses. How old is this pig? Open your mouth. She's close to 20. How far are we from Cincinnati? Maybe 15, 20 minutes. Oh, that's it? Yeah. Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm in the country. I know. Sarah was the captain of her high school volleyball and softball teams. She injured her knee during a regional volleyball tournament at the age of 18. Her doctor prescribed Percocet. I think I took maybe two one day. And really, I liked the feeling. It was more of a buzz than just the pain gone. And I liked that. It would be the beginning of her descent into heroin addiction. What happened when you did it the first time? I was immediately in love with it. I loved the feeling. When our cameras began following Sarah Corden Brock back in 2012, she was trying to kick her heroin habit. When did you start using heroin? It didn't take long, maybe within a year. It got to the point where pain pills were too expensive. What were you paying? $80 for one pill. I always crushed him down and snorted him. And the boy I was dating at the time had hidden the fact that he was using heroin. from me and I walked in and found him using heroin and thought I could try it once it's not gonna hurt me one time. We went downtown Cincinnati and pulled up to this back alley in the most awful part of town no place that I should have been. And waited for a stranger to bring us a bag of heroin and hope that nobody stole our money while we sat there. That almost becomes part of the high. You know, the fact that you're in a part of town that's a little bit sketchy and you know you really shouldn't be there. And it's excitement, you know. First, she used heroin on the weekends. Soon, every day. Then, all day, every day. Back and forth into the city, spending hundreds of dollars daily. There she is! But she was able to hide her addiction and have a normal life at first, like enjoying meals with her family and young niece. I have a job. I've got my car paid for. I've got my own apartment. I had to have heroin to do all those things to be able to function, but I was still doing it. Did you think you were an addict? Absolutely not, no. Now, my idea of an addict was, you know, this girl that walks down the street and prostitutes or lives under a bridge or, you know, that was my idea. That was my picture. That didn't include me. Kim and Greg Cordenbrock. began to suspect their daughter was using drugs. When she began to be very secretive about things and our relationship wasn't as important to her, I just knew a mother's gut instinct that... Something was terribly wrong. Yeah, they confronted me, and of course I lied. No, of course not, I would never do that, you can drug test me. Did they? They did. But as a manipulative addict, I just got around it. I just passed it. You know, so there were always ways for me to get around things for a long time. Sarah's father, Greg, didn't want to believe his wife's suspicions. She was always... Daddy's a little girl. Do you think the fact that she was Daddy's girl played a role in you not believing that she had a problem? I think it played a huge role. I was like, no, this can't be. Not Sarah. Not Sarah. It would be more than two years after Sarah started using heroin that her mother would finally feel certain. My mom picked up a pair of jeans that I had laid across the chair in the kitchen. And she picked them up to fold them for me and put them away for me. And when she folded it, a little packet of heroin fell out onto the floor. And she was just devastated. Sarah's parents had her. committed to a psych ward for 72 hours, and then into an intensive outpatient program. Did you think once she was in that rehab program for 10 weeks that... We thought we've really won this battle. We've caught this just in time, and this is going to be wonderful. They were wrong. Several months after finishing rehab, Sarah relapsed. How bad did it get for you? Oh my gosh. I can't imagine it getting any worse for me. It turned me into somebody that I wasn't at all. It turned me into a liar. It turned me into a thief. So what kinds of things would you put in here? We'd put anything in here of value. We purchased a safe that's the size of a very large refrigerator. That's how crazy it became around here. We got this because... All our stuff was walking out of here. And I had to have someplace to put our valuables. How much money would you guess that you spent on rehab and buying your stuff back and all the stuff that comes around rehab? $77,000. You know exactly how much. I know exactly what I spent. I turned 52 Sunday. I've worked for my company for 30 years. I have a pension. I have a retirement. I could have walked out of there Sunday. But you can't because? Because I have to. to keep working. We liquidated. We liquidated to pay for this to save her life. Sarah would spend the next several years in and out of rehab. We delivered her to a place and it was a dump. It was a dump. And she said, Dad, please don't leave me here. I said, I don't have any choice. She called me a couple days later and she loved it. and that her counselor was so nice that she allowed her to use her cell phone. And I just thought, this is fantastic. She's just, it's really clicked with her this time. We were supposed to visit with her in about seven to ten days. I can't remember exactly what the, I think maybe about ten days. We went to the front desk, and, you know, they're just looking at us like, oh, no, here they are. And the director just came and said, she's not here. She's not been here. She left the day we had run out of time. dropped her off. So every phone call had been a lie? Yeah. Addicts are master manipulators. If their mouths are moving, they're lying. Another time after being clean for six months, she relapsed again. It had strychnine in it to, I guess, make it look like more than it was. I fell, they call it falling out. I fell out and the person I was with called 911. Sarah had OD'd. We'll have eight, ten overdoses in a week, three or four in a day, and two at one time, three at one time, in the same house, same parking lot. Dan Matthew is the fire chief in Covington, Kentucky, the suburb where Sarah lives. His department is seeing the number of heroin overdoses skyrocket. Covington's emergency medical service crews respond to all those overdoses. You find the patients, they're usually not breathing, or they're breathing very slowly or shallowly. We put an airway in them, we breathe for them, prepare an IV usually, and give them Narcan. Narcan, also known as naloxone, the generic name for the drug. is an opiate blocker that can literally revive a heroin overdose victim. The medication comes in a 2 milligram pre-filled syringe, and it gets attached to an atomization device. Very simple to use. After Sarah's overdose, she got two shots of Narcan to revive her. They told her if she'd waited two more minutes, she'd be dead. I died and came back to life, but yet still wanted to get high. So I had to be able to go get more, and so that's what I did. I got in the car and put it out of my mind because I knew I could get high. And as soon as I got high, I didn't think about the fact that I had OD anymore. Sarah's parents began to feel so helpless, they started to hatch a desperate plan. I said, we've got to do something with Sarah, and we've got to do it today. Kim and Greg Kordenbrock were considering the unthinkable, putting their daughter behind bars. I brought her home and I said, look, if I were you, I would get downstairs, I'd jump in the shower, get yourself cleaned up, put some fresh clothes on, put a sweatshirt on, because your life's going to change today. They handcuffed her on my back porch and took her away, and she was standing on my back porch with her hands behind her back, and she says, Dad, are you going to come bail me out tonight or tomorrow? Real flippant. And he said, I'm going to save your life. Sarah found herself here at the Kenton County Detention Center in Covington, Kentucky. You know, I was in this concrete cell for four days, so sick and cold and feeling horrible, like the super... I called and would cry and beg them to come and get me. She called? All the time. Were you ever tempted to say, let's just end it, take her out of there, let's just... Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And my dad would say, My attorney's going, Greg, don't bail her out. Do not go get her. But you wanted to. Oh, yeah. Oh, every day. Officials at the detention center say up to 75% of the women here are locked up for heroin-related crimes. Women like Crystal Leitner, Christian Cristello, and Mary Woodward. I prostituted my body and slept with anybody, anything to get what I needed to get high. I was... I would literally beg, borrow, and steal just to get the money, manipulating people that I loved and cared about, hurting people that I loved the most with lies and manipulation just to get the money to feed my addiction. All three have lost everything, including their children, because of their heroin habit. Sometimes we're not even getting high, we're just getting well. You know, just well enough to get out of bed, to go to work, to try to take care of our kids, which a lot of us... moms that had to fight this disease doesn't have custody of our kids anymore. And our kids have suffered tremendously too. I regret choosing heroin over my children. The hardest thing to deal with, to get to sleep at night knowing that it's just not natural, that's not right. How could anything make me? She's not over my kids. Oh, Cricket's right there. She said they will buy Verizon phones, but it's under contract. Olivia Deland is still in the grip of her heroin addiction. Go in there and tell them that it's not new. She and her boyfriend Tyler are trying to get the money for their next fix by pawning cell phones. It's kind of sad when you get to know people at the pawn shop like first name basis. Tyler phones his dealer to buy heroin and syringes. Hey, what's up? Nothing. I'm heading down. I need a rig, too, though. Probably like four, maybe five. It's been a rough morning. Olivia's mother, Carmen, kicked them out after finding pawn receipts and drug paraphernalia. It's just hard to watch her just be so desperate and anxious and mean. She just turns into somebody else, and then... and so do I. Olivia and Tyler had to sleep in their car. It's a small car. You can see there's not much room for two people, but we did. We both laid back there and got what little sleep we could. It was cold, and like I said, we didn't have food, money. I was hungry or thirsty, and then on top of that, trying to find drugs. And doing heroin. Yeah, now that I think about it, I don't even know how we managed to even do it. We found a way. We always find a way. They leave their daughter, Callie, with her parents. It's not the first time Olivia's been separated from Callie. Child Protective Services almost took Callie away. Oh yeah, that's right. That was when she was younger. How old was she? I can't even remember. She was like a baby though, like four months, something like that. This is a pretty complicated tower. It sure is. Was it hard for you to leave Callie with your mom? It's very hard for me not to be with her. Very. These were so attached to me. I can go right here. Wow, look how tall it is now, Cal. And yet you're doing something that's pretty likely to kill you. Which means you could end up leaving her forever. Yeah. I just don't think about that. I'm just addicted to it. It's just an addiction. An addiction that's threatening her life. Olivia's contracted hepatitis C from IV drug use. It's a contagious liver disease that can be fatal. I've done anything from stealing. I have prostituted probably three times, maybe more. For drugs? For drugs, yeah. Do you just feel terrible? Do you feel nothing? Do you feel... After doing this for so long, it just affects the chemicals in your brain. And I'm pretty much numb to emotion almost. I really don't feel anything. Like music isn't the same when you listen to music. It's hard to laugh and cry. It's like impossible to cry. Does it kill your mom? Yeah, my mom. has she's completely changed as a person I've destroyed my mom I mean I've just killed her killed her and how do you feel about that I mean I feel horrible about so many things that I've done and that's that's like another thing that like keeps it going almost it's like you do the drugs you do things that are bad you And then you feel bad about doing the things that you do for drugs. And that makes you want to use drugs even more to cover up that pain. So it's just like a vicious cycle of over and over and over again. How difficult have the last years been for you? Undescribable. Just constant worry. I mean, even when things are good, you're so worried. something might happen to change them. Even after going through rehab, addicts often relapse. Genetics play a substantial role in becoming addicted to heroin. The drug actually alters an addict's brain chemistry. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that up to 60% of all addicts will relapse, but some addiction experts put that relapse rate as high as 90%. The brain's reward center becomes hijacked by the drug and trying not to use an opioid can be like trying never to eat again. In September of 2014, Olivia finds out she's pregnant again. She and Tyler swear they'll stop using. I know for a fact that me being pregnant, that's not going to happen. I just don't have that in me. do that. This is a big motivator. I mean I wanted to before but it's not gonna happen. It's over with for me. I mean it's done. No more. You know my eyes it's a it's just you know not just a second chance at being a good father but the second chance at life. I don't care how sick I get it's not it's not worth losing my family. Sick from going through withdrawal, a heroin addict who stops using gets physically ill, with intense flu-like symptoms and extreme anxiety. Mike Heffron, like Olivia, grew up in an upscale Ohio suburb. He knew the pain of withdrawal well. Back in 2013, Mike and his friend Joe Lagore went through that hell. You gotta do it every day. You can't walk, you're sick, you're puking. Here in about 30 seconds, I will... the whole world will be lifted off my shoulders. I got 33 and then you're 15. That makes $48. $50. Mike Heffron and a friend, Joe LaGore, are going through withdrawal. So they're looking for their next fix. You got a ride? I'm still without a ride, bro. come see me or I'll meet you. This is the two of them back in 2013 caught in a desperate moment. If it's seriously 75 it better put me on my ass and I'm not trying to be put on my ass right now. 75. It was kind of outrageous. They shot up heroin that morning. But if they don't get another fix soon, they'll get what's called dope sick. They are physically craving the drug. You need so much, you gotta use probably every three to four hours. You start getting sniffles, eyes water, chills, lashes. It just takes your body over. They shoot up just to feel normal. You actually feel like you're really dying. I would actually pray to God to kill me. I don't want to live that way. It's the worst feeling in the world. They both have tried to quit. Mike's been in and out of a local rehab center nicknamed The Cat House. I'm sure they're tired of seeing me at The Cat House. I've been there so many times. I've been there probably three times in the past, since October. They've lost their jobs, their students, spouses and their children. I have one girl, my daughter is 12 and my son is 6. And I love them to death. In this picture she was probably not even a year old in this picture, probably three in this picture. Mike was raised in an upper middle class family in the Cincinnati suburbs. I grew up in a somewhat wealthy family. I was very, very fortunate that I had both parents that loved me. And luckily they loved me enough to provide me a very good childhood. That's me, I was in the tournament. I had perfect, perfect swing. Yeah, I love sports, especially golf. And every single day is about, after my sophomore year, it was about golf. You know, that's all I played. Mike's father, Dennis, encouraged him to play. I would drop him off at the golf course on my way to work at 7 o'clock, and I'd pick him up at 5 o'clock in the afternoon on my way home from work. He was literally there all day, and he played golf. all day, all summer. In high school, I went to every golf match that he played in. You know, he was there. Me and him were real close. And I felt like I let him down huge. Let him down. When he started doing drugs, first smoking marijuana, then prescription pills and cocaine, and finally heroin. He admitted it, that he was on heroin. And I asked him, I said, Michael, how could you do that? No. knowing full well what it's going to do to you. And he said, Dad, he said, I tried it once. And then I tried it again. And I couldn't stop trying it. Hey, what's his number? What's his number? Okay. Some parents, it seems to me, often have to make this decision between the tough love of like, that's it, we're cutting you off, or I'd rather know where you are and know where you're sleeping. What was that conundrum like for you? Everybody preaches tough love, okay? I couldn't do it. Because in my mind, I thought that we'd get a phone call one day and they found him dead. But my dad, he still talks to me. He just doesn't. He wants me to get better and right now I can't get, I've checked myself into rehab. I just can't get through the dope sickness part. Uh, yeah, what about that guy from yesterday that's, um, uh... or whatever that you introduced me to or whatever. The 658 number. Then, after scoring more heroin, Mike and Joe prepare to shoot up again. Okay, it's ready for shoot. The life of hell. Here in about 30 seconds, I will, the whole world will be lifted off my shoulders. That's exactly how I feel right now. Mike says he wishes he'd never let someone persuade him to try heroin that first time. If I would have known that it does this to you, and if I would have known that I would be like this. You know, a year later, I would have told him to go to hell. I would have straight up told him to go to hell. I would have never stuck that needle in my arm. Never in a million years. He says heroin has robbed him of his life. and his future. I'd love to see my kids grow up, and I know if I keep using, I won't get that opportunity to see them grow up because I'll probably end up dead. This drug will kill me eventually if I keep using. Ten months after this interview, Mike died of a heroin overdose. He was 34 years old. Even though Olivia and Tyler vow to quit when she finds out she's pregnant, they continue using heroin. A month later, Tyler checks into a rehab facility, this one in Las Vegas. Olivia is faced with a tough decision. Yeah, I was pregnant, and I actually terminated the pregnancy. And that was really hard for me to do, because normally I'd never do something like that. I wouldn't even think about it. But I thought that I couldn't imagine myself having a child right now. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to anybody, especially as a child. You're going to head off to rehab? Yeah, tomorrow I'm going to go to a detox is what it is. I'll probably be there for like seven to ten days, and then I'll come home. And I'll do like intensive outpatient where I'll go like three times a week to groups and counselors and can stay clean. Are you nervous about it? Yeah, I am. Yeah, I'm nervous. I'm really nervous. What are you nervous about? I'm nervous about coming home afterwards. Why? I just, I hope I can be strong enough and not let that evil take over me. Do you worry that you're going to die? Um. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's hard. You're not really thinking about that when you're doing it. But I know that the reality, I know that I could, yeah, because I've had people overdose in front of me, and it is scary, you know. But when it comes to yourself, you just... You don't think about it. You just don't. I think there are a lot of people who would say, but you have a kid. Like, can't you just get it together for your kid? If it wasn't for Callie, I'd probably be dead already. She's the reason that I'm just holding on still. Olivia Deland's mother, Carmen, knows the difficulties that lie ahead. Olivia has already been to rehab. five times. It's not like you just go to rehab or detox and then rehab and you're done. And I used to think that myself. I always wondered, well, they went to treatment, you know, why aren't they better? I didn't realize that the hardest part comes later. So it's a forever thing. It's a forever struggle. Dealing with Olivia's addiction has drained Carmen and her family. both financially and emotionally. I've gotten to the point where I've told Olivia, I feel really bad for you. I feel helpless. I can't help you. It's almost like I had to let her go. I said, but I've come to the point where it's either you or all of us, this whole family. I have to make a choice between you or all of us. It's now up to Olivia to get the treatment she needs. Today, she's packing to go to the detox center when she gets a text from her friend, Miranda. Miranda just messaged me saying that if somebody can get her right now, she's got $40. And she called someone and they said they could hook it up. So basically, she's wanting to go get drugs right now. It's such a temptation. You know, I went into this population area looking like a deer in headlights. I was completely out of my element. It was really scary. It was really, really frightening. And I didn't have anything to do but sit and think. Sarah Cordenbrock spent 54 days locked up here in the Kenton County Detention Center after her parents had her arrested. Jail forced her to take a hard look at her heroin habit. I turned into such a thief and a liar and just, you know, I would walk into family functions and the women grabbed their purses. What was it like to get out of jail? Wonderful. Were you clean by then? Oh yeah. And you felt like you were ready to turn it around? I felt like I needed to go into a treatment. I was ready for a change. I was ready for anything but the life that I was living. Sarah's parents were at a breaking point when they drove her to Crossroads Rehabilitation Center in Indiana back in 2012. From this point forward... It's going to be... Actions are going to tell the tale. Exactly. Because we don't buy words. No. Anymore. But, I mean, you talk the game. So, I know you know. Yeah. I know you know exactly what you're supposed to do. I know. She would spend the next 45 days here. I mean I've been an inpatient and an outpatient and I really just went to shut everybody up. And until I had to face the chaos of my life and go sit... in jail for two months. That was my bottom. After getting out of rehab, Sarah managed to stay clean. Through a support group, she eventually met the man who would become her fiancé, Eric Kyle. They have a daughter together, Ella Grace. Do you feel like you've dodged a bullet? I feel like I have a second chance. I'm able to live and enjoy my life. Because I didn't enjoy it before. It was just an existence. It wasn't really living. What makes you think you won't go back to using heroin? Do you think about it? No. Never? You know, I didn't have any type of a purpose. And my daughter means the world to me. And there's no way I am willing to give up my family for a drug ever again in my life. Nothing is worth my family. Looking back on her life, Sarah says she regrets all the time she wasted. I wasted seven years doing nothing but getting high. You know, I didn't accomplish any of these dreams that I wanted to do. What did you want to do? I wanted to go away to school and play ball. I wanted... To experience college like a normal 20-year-old. You know, I wanted to be able to have those memories. And I didn't get any of those memories. Now she's making new memories. I'm getting little braids and curls and kind of twisted and an updo. I'm excited. Sarah is getting married. Okay, I'm going to go get girls'bows, and then are we going to put your dress on, Sarah? Yes. You need your sister up here. Yes. Like a lot of little girls, I couldn't wait to pick out my wedding dress and plan my wedding, and that was something that was so exciting to me. I wanted to be married, and I wanted to have kids, and when I got into the midst of my addiction, I just kind of pushed it aside. I just thought it wasn't an option for me. And you never thought you'd be married? No. I really, I think in when I was using really hard, I didn't think that I was going to live long enough to get married. As she walks down the aisle, her parents are proud of how far their daughter has come. That was a great day. That was a great day. It was a day that I didn't think I was going to get. Sarah, if you'll repeat after me. I, Sarah. I, Sarah. Take you, Eric. Take you, Eric. You know, so I think my wedding day was just, they were so happy for me to finally be in a position where I wanted to be and have my happily ever after. I therefore pronounce that you are husband and wife. Eric, may I kiss you right? Olivia Deland is still searching for her happily ever after. She's getting ready to go to the detox center and leaving her four-year-old daughter Callie behind. What makes you think you're ready this time? I just know because I can't do it anymore. I just know. I just can't. There's so many people dying and it's just, I just can't. She's getting older. I just can't do it to her anymore. I can't. It's like killing me inside. Can you successfully kick your habit without moving out of town, giving up your friends, not ever seeing Tyler again? I think that if I am wanting to stay clean, I'm going to have to not talk to any of the people that I go get high with ever again. Not at all. But just hours before the van from the detox center arrives to take her there, her friend Miranda starts calling and texting, asking Olivia to go get drugs with her. I'm thinking I want to go get high before I go, but I can't do that. It's just such a temptation for me not to just go right now. Like if I wasn't having a driver pick me up right now, I'd probably do that before I went. Desperate, Olivia goes out to her car to retrieve the cotton swabs she used to shoot up the day before. I got the cottons that you use when we do this, and I just sucked out everything that I could out of the cotton from the dope that we used the other day. So, because I've used so much for so many years, it's really hard to hit my veins. My veins are just so used up. She tries to shoot up once again. Alright, I give up. I don't even care. I'm gonna go smoke. I think that'll help. Oh my gosh, you get here. God, you're calling. She's calling me again. It's like it's like pulling me like It's like a freaking force like just pulling me, like sucking me in, just like telling me to just like say screw it and leave. This wouldn't be so hard if this guy wasn't coming, I'd just go get drugs and then go to treatment. It wouldn't be a big deal. The van from the detox center arrives. She leaves the middle class suburb where she grew up. The journey ahead for Olivia. What could be the road to recovery?

Sprawling. Safe. Serene. The suburbs.

Not the kind of place you'd expect to find. An epidemic. Leah Deland is desperate for a fix. So desperate for heroin, she's stealing from her family.

What did you grab to take to the pawn shop? Just a weed eater. I'm going to get it all back out tomorrow, though. How much money can you get for it?

You put it in the back of the car? Forty dollars. Which probably costs a couple hundred. Goodbye.

And will you buy $40 worth of heroin? Unless I need some gas. I follow her as she drives away from the suburban home where she grew up. She races through the rain to get to the pawn shop before it closes.

My anxiety is horribly high. It's just a really scary feeling. She arrives just in time.

My whole body just aches, and you have, like, chills, and you puke. It's like every symptom you could possibly think of. It's not the first time she's stolen from her family.

She pawned her father's leaf blower already this morning, just to get high. 24-year-old Olivia Deland is typical of the new face of the heroin epidemic. Young, well-off, and white.

When you wake up, do you immediately think, I gotta go score some heroin? That's the first thought. Like, I don't do anything else until I do that. That's number one priority. Olivia grew up in Mainville, one of the sleepy suburbs in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky overshadowed by the Cincinnati skyline.

I grew up in like a good home, but I mean I had a good childhood and I don't know why it's such a problem now. I mean it's everywhere now. There's like, I mean there's so many people from my school around this area that do it that I had no idea until recently and it's just, I don't know, it's crazy like.

After leaving the pawn shop, she scores drugs with her friend Miranda Warmwald. They can't wait to get high, so they pull over in this leafy, suburban neighborhood to shoot up in the car. What kind of job do you have, Mandy?

I was a preschool teacher for four years, and I stopped because I didn't want to teach kids while I was in high school. Is there a belt back there? Does it hurt? No.

What's it like when you get a hit of heroin? It's amazing. I mean, it's just like a relief. I mean, so many things can be wrong, but you feel like everything's just perfect.

It's like on your wedding day, like that feeling that you get, it's like that every time. And how long will that last for you? It honestly doesn't last very long.

The first hit, the rush, is what people chase after more than anything. That rush that you first get when you shoot up. And then after that, it's like, most people just feel normal, honestly.

Back in 2013, Olivia's life had already descended into drug addiction. She was just 18 years old when she started using heroin. The first time I ever tried heroin was here at this house. I remember like the exact day, clearly still. Just like the smells of the house, everything.

I remember my mom had had the carpet cleaned that day, so the whole house smelled like just fresh. And I remember just being in my room, and out of nowhere my older brother walks in, and... He just asked, hey, do you want to try this? And I don't know what came over me, but I had no questions in my mind.

I was just like, yeah. She told her boyfriend Tyler she had tried heroin. I had told him about it.

I had told him I tried it. And he was really, really mad at me. Very mad. And I just, I was like, I'm sorry Tyler, but I was like, I gotta tell you how great this stuff is.

Like it was amazing. Like you have no idea, like. And then a couple days later, he was like, well I want to try it. Olivia stopped using when she became pregnant.

She gave birth to her daughter, Callie, in 2010, then quickly started up again. Snorting at first. When we caught up to her a year later, heroin addiction had taken over her life.

I started injecting pretty fast after I started up again, yeah. And that's when it really went downhill. When you say go downhill, what do you mean? I started using every day. I needed it.

Like, my body physically needed it. What's your habit now, cost-wise? Cost-wise, I probably spend like $100 a day. Olivia arrives for our interview after getting high. Then she's obsessed with arranging a drug deal.

She constantly checks her phone to see if her dealer has texted her. Did he text you back? Not yet. Are you getting anxious about it?

Yeah. Drug that was once an inner-city problem is hitting suburban America and hitting it hard. 911, where's your emergency?

My brother, I think he's ODN. I just found him on the floor gas and prayer. Heroin overdose, this one's very rare. are now happening at an alarming rate. Can I dispatch fast?

In Collington, Kentucky, on Philadelphia Street in McDonald's bathroom, in the men's room, there's a woman that supposedly overdosed. Just last October, hospitals in three small Kentucky cities suburbs outside Cincinnati treated 10 overdoses in a 48-hour period. Two of them were fatal.

The death rate from heroin overdoses across the country nearly quadrupled between 2000 and 2013. That's one of our spots where we've had a lot of activity. On the front lines, Spike Jones, the police chief of Covington, Kentucky. The type of people that we're seeing that are drug addicted aren't people just passed out.

in alleyways, they're people from suburbs, they're people from very successful families. They're not what you would imagine. The number of heroin users across the country soared 82 percent between 2007 and 2013 to 681,000. And how much of your time now is spent focused on heroin? A lot.

Chief Jones works with crime scene investigator Don Bayless and they show me some of the heroin that's been seized. during recent police arrests. What would something like this cost a heroin user?

Anywhere between $15 and $20. You know, that can be cooked down, put into a syringe, and shot up. So it's a relatively inexpensive price for a long high.

We catch people quite often in their car ready to shoot up. They get caught all the time. We've found people with their kids in the car seats in the back.

And mom and dad in the front seat passed out from shooting up. The number of people who died of heroin overdoses in Ohio nearly tripled in just three years between 2010 and 2013. While in Kentucky, the number of deaths over that same period rose nearly 500%. Heroin addiction isn't just plaguing the suburbs around Cincinnati. The drug is also infesting suburbs around the country, like here in New Jersey.

I think it would be hard for a lot of people to think that in a bucolic, beautiful, suburban neighborhood, you know, like this one, that there would be... Actually a big drug problem. Most people, when they think of heroin, they think of inner city communities, they think of the heroin epidemic that hit the country in the 1970s and that disproportionately affected. people who were poor and non-white. Dr. Andrew Kolodny is the chief medical officer at Phoenix House, a non-profit drug treatment organization.

The heroin crisis we're dealing with today is affecting suburbs and rural areas. It's much more severe than the epidemic we had in the 1970s. So we're dealing with the worst drug epidemic in United States history.

Back in 2000, it was older black people who had the highest rate of heroin overdose. But by 2013, young white people had the highest rate. Dr. Kolodny says the epidemic began shifting a decade ago in the Appalachian region of the country.

It also began hitting New England early, spreading into the mid-Atlantic states and the Midwest. While heroin is also hitting other parts of the country, These regions are all now heroin hotspots. Heroin's move to the suburbs began with the explosion of prescription pain pills, pushed hard by drug companies. It's important to remember that you have to try to help yourself by finding a doctor that understands pain management.

With the right doctor, And the right medication in place, many patients can live a complete and normal life. Sales of prescription painkillers quadrupled between 1999 and 2010. Less than 1% of patients taking opioids actually become addicted. About 4 out of 5 heroin users today became addicted to opioids, to opioid painkillers, before they ever used heroin.

Heroin is also an opioid and the most addictive of all illegal drugs. As authorities cracked down on prescription painkillers, the pills got harder to get and more expensive. At the same time, heroin was becoming more pure.

That made it a potent alternative you could snort instead of inject. Well, a young person who gets addicted to painkillers, they'll switch to heroin because a $10 bag of heroin We'll do exactly what a $30 pill of oxycodone would do. Drug traffickers began targeting the suburbs and rural areas, searching for new clients. The opioid epidemic is hitting middle-class white families and communities because it's in white households that you're more likely to find painkillers in the medicine chest.

Sarah Cordenbrock grew up in a bucolic setting just outside the Kentucky suburb of Covington. Her family, solidly middle class. So, how many animals do you have? Um, let's see, we have five goats, a pig, one mini horse, um, a donkey, and three Tennessee walking horses.

How old is this pig? Open your mouth. She's close to 20. How far are we from Cincinnati? Maybe 15, 20 minutes. Oh, that's it?

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm in the country. I know.

Sarah was the captain of her high school volleyball and softball teams. She injured her knee during a regional volleyball tournament at the age of 18. Her doctor prescribed Percocet. I think I took maybe two one day. And really, I liked the feeling. It was more of a buzz than just the pain gone.

And I liked that. It would be the beginning of her descent into heroin addiction. What happened when you did it the first time? I was immediately in love with it. I loved the feeling.

When our cameras began following Sarah Corden Brock back in 2012, she was trying to kick her heroin habit. When did you start using heroin? It didn't take long, maybe within a year. It got to the point where pain pills were too expensive.

What were you paying? $80 for one pill. I always crushed him down and snorted him.

And the boy I was dating at the time had hidden the fact that he was using heroin. from me and I walked in and found him using heroin and thought I could try it once it's not gonna hurt me one time. We went downtown Cincinnati and pulled up to this back alley in the most awful part of town no place that I should have been.

And waited for a stranger to bring us a bag of heroin and hope that nobody stole our money while we sat there. That almost becomes part of the high. You know, the fact that you're in a part of town that's a little bit sketchy and you know you really shouldn't be there. And it's excitement, you know. First, she used heroin on the weekends.

Soon, every day. Then, all day, every day. Back and forth into the city, spending hundreds of dollars daily.

There she is! But she was able to hide her addiction and have a normal life at first, like enjoying meals with her family and young niece. I have a job. I've got my car paid for. I've got my own apartment.

I had to have heroin to do all those things to be able to function, but I was still doing it. Did you think you were an addict? Absolutely not, no. Now, my idea of an addict was, you know, this girl that walks down the street and prostitutes or lives under a bridge or, you know, that was my idea. That was my picture.

That didn't include me. Kim and Greg Cordenbrock. began to suspect their daughter was using drugs.

When she began to be very secretive about things and our relationship wasn't as important to her, I just knew a mother's gut instinct that... Something was terribly wrong. Yeah, they confronted me, and of course I lied. No, of course not, I would never do that, you can drug test me.

Did they? They did. But as a manipulative addict, I just got around it.

I just passed it. You know, so there were always ways for me to get around things for a long time. Sarah's father, Greg, didn't want to believe his wife's suspicions. She was always... Daddy's a little girl.

Do you think the fact that she was Daddy's girl played a role in you not believing that she had a problem? I think it played a huge role. I was like, no, this can't be.

Not Sarah. Not Sarah. It would be more than two years after Sarah started using heroin that her mother would finally feel certain. My mom picked up a pair of jeans that I had laid across the chair in the kitchen. And she picked them up to fold them for me and put them away for me.

And when she folded it, a little packet of heroin fell out onto the floor. And she was just devastated. Sarah's parents had her. committed to a psych ward for 72 hours, and then into an intensive outpatient program. Did you think once she was in that rehab program for 10 weeks that...

We thought we've really won this battle. We've caught this just in time, and this is going to be wonderful. They were wrong.

Several months after finishing rehab, Sarah relapsed. How bad did it get for you? Oh my gosh. I can't imagine it getting any worse for me.

It turned me into somebody that I wasn't at all. It turned me into a liar. It turned me into a thief. So what kinds of things would you put in here? We'd put anything in here of value.

We purchased a safe that's the size of a very large refrigerator. That's how crazy it became around here. We got this because...

All our stuff was walking out of here. And I had to have someplace to put our valuables. How much money would you guess that you spent on rehab and buying your stuff back and all the stuff that comes around rehab? $77,000.

You know exactly how much. I know exactly what I spent. I turned 52 Sunday. I've worked for my company for 30 years.

I have a pension. I have a retirement. I could have walked out of there Sunday.

But you can't because? Because I have to. to keep working.

We liquidated. We liquidated to pay for this to save her life. Sarah would spend the next several years in and out of rehab.

We delivered her to a place and it was a dump. It was a dump. And she said, Dad, please don't leave me here.

I said, I don't have any choice. She called me a couple days later and she loved it. and that her counselor was so nice that she allowed her to use her cell phone. And I just thought, this is fantastic. She's just, it's really clicked with her this time.

We were supposed to visit with her in about seven to ten days. I can't remember exactly what the, I think maybe about ten days. We went to the front desk, and, you know, they're just looking at us like, oh, no, here they are. And the director just came and said, she's not here. She's not been here.

She left the day we had run out of time. dropped her off. So every phone call had been a lie? Yeah.

Addicts are master manipulators. If their mouths are moving, they're lying. Another time after being clean for six months, she relapsed again. It had strychnine in it to, I guess, make it look like more than it was. I fell, they call it falling out.

I fell out and the person I was with called 911. Sarah had OD'd. We'll have eight, ten overdoses in a week, three or four in a day, and two at one time, three at one time, in the same house, same parking lot. Dan Matthew is the fire chief in Covington, Kentucky, the suburb where Sarah lives. His department is seeing the number of heroin overdoses skyrocket. Covington's emergency medical service crews respond to all those overdoses.

You find the patients, they're usually not breathing, or they're breathing very slowly or shallowly. We put an airway in them, we breathe for them, prepare an IV usually, and give them Narcan. Narcan, also known as naloxone, the generic name for the drug.

is an opiate blocker that can literally revive a heroin overdose victim. The medication comes in a 2 milligram pre-filled syringe, and it gets attached to an atomization device. Very simple to use.

After Sarah's overdose, she got two shots of Narcan to revive her. They told her if she'd waited two more minutes, she'd be dead. I died and came back to life, but yet still wanted to get high.

So I had to be able to go get more, and so that's what I did. I got in the car and put it out of my mind because I knew I could get high. And as soon as I got high, I didn't think about the fact that I had OD anymore.

Sarah's parents began to feel so helpless, they started to hatch a desperate plan. I said, we've got to do something with Sarah, and we've got to do it today. Kim and Greg Kordenbrock were considering the unthinkable, putting their daughter behind bars. I brought her home and I said, look, if I were you, I would get downstairs, I'd jump in the shower, get yourself cleaned up, put some fresh clothes on, put a sweatshirt on, because your life's going to change today.

They handcuffed her on my back porch and took her away, and she was standing on my back porch with her hands behind her back, and she says, Dad, are you going to come bail me out tonight or tomorrow? Real flippant. And he said, I'm going to save your life. Sarah found herself here at the Kenton County Detention Center in Covington, Kentucky.

You know, I was in this concrete cell for four days, so sick and cold and feeling horrible, like the super... I called and would cry and beg them to come and get me. She called? All the time. Were you ever tempted to say, let's just end it, take her out of there, let's just...

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And my dad would say, My attorney's going, Greg, don't bail her out. Do not go get her. But you wanted to.

Oh, yeah. Oh, every day. Officials at the detention center say up to 75% of the women here are locked up for heroin-related crimes.

Women like Crystal Leitner, Christian Cristello, and Mary Woodward. I prostituted my body and slept with anybody, anything to get what I needed to get high. I was... I would literally beg, borrow, and steal just to get the money, manipulating people that I loved and cared about, hurting people that I loved the most with lies and manipulation just to get the money to feed my addiction.

All three have lost everything, including their children, because of their heroin habit. Sometimes we're not even getting high, we're just getting well. You know, just well enough to get out of bed, to go to work, to try to take care of our kids, which a lot of us...

moms that had to fight this disease doesn't have custody of our kids anymore. And our kids have suffered tremendously too. I regret choosing heroin over my children.

The hardest thing to deal with, to get to sleep at night knowing that it's just not natural, that's not right. How could anything make me? She's not over my kids.

Oh, Cricket's right there. She said they will buy Verizon phones, but it's under contract. Olivia Deland is still in the grip of her heroin addiction. Go in there and tell them that it's not new.

She and her boyfriend Tyler are trying to get the money for their next fix by pawning cell phones. It's kind of sad when you get to know people at the pawn shop like first name basis. Tyler phones his dealer to buy heroin and syringes. Hey, what's up?

Nothing. I'm heading down. I need a rig, too, though. Probably like four, maybe five. It's been a rough morning.

Olivia's mother, Carmen, kicked them out after finding pawn receipts and drug paraphernalia. It's just hard to watch her just be so desperate and anxious and mean. She just turns into somebody else, and then... and so do I. Olivia and Tyler had to sleep in their car.

It's a small car. You can see there's not much room for two people, but we did. We both laid back there and got what little sleep we could.

It was cold, and like I said, we didn't have food, money. I was hungry or thirsty, and then on top of that, trying to find drugs. And doing heroin.

Yeah, now that I think about it, I don't even know how we managed to even do it. We found a way. We always find a way. They leave their daughter, Callie, with her parents. It's not the first time Olivia's been separated from Callie.

Child Protective Services almost took Callie away. Oh yeah, that's right. That was when she was younger. How old was she?

I can't even remember. She was like a baby though, like four months, something like that. This is a pretty complicated tower. It sure is.

Was it hard for you to leave Callie with your mom? It's very hard for me not to be with her. Very. These were so attached to me.

I can go right here. Wow, look how tall it is now, Cal. And yet you're doing something that's pretty likely to kill you.

Which means you could end up leaving her forever. Yeah. I just don't think about that.

I'm just addicted to it. It's just an addiction. An addiction that's threatening her life. Olivia's contracted hepatitis C from IV drug use.

It's a contagious liver disease that can be fatal. I've done anything from stealing. I have prostituted probably three times, maybe more.

For drugs? For drugs, yeah. Do you just feel terrible?

Do you feel nothing? Do you feel... After doing this for so long, it just affects the chemicals in your brain. And I'm pretty much numb to emotion almost.

I really don't feel anything. Like music isn't the same when you listen to music. It's hard to laugh and cry. It's like impossible to cry.

Does it kill your mom? Yeah, my mom. has she's completely changed as a person I've destroyed my mom I mean I've just killed her killed her and how do you feel about that I mean I feel horrible about so many things that I've done and that's that's like another thing that like keeps it going almost it's like you do the drugs you do things that are bad you And then you feel bad about doing the things that you do for drugs.

And that makes you want to use drugs even more to cover up that pain. So it's just like a vicious cycle of over and over and over again. How difficult have the last years been for you? Undescribable.

Just constant worry. I mean, even when things are good, you're so worried. something might happen to change them. Even after going through rehab, addicts often relapse.

Genetics play a substantial role in becoming addicted to heroin. The drug actually alters an addict's brain chemistry. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that up to 60% of all addicts will relapse, but some addiction experts put that relapse rate as high as 90%. The brain's reward center becomes hijacked by the drug and trying not to use an opioid can be like trying never to eat again.

In September of 2014, Olivia finds out she's pregnant again. She and Tyler swear they'll stop using. I know for a fact that me being pregnant, that's not going to happen.

I just don't have that in me. do that. This is a big motivator. I mean I wanted to before but it's not gonna happen.

It's over with for me. I mean it's done. No more.

You know my eyes it's a it's just you know not just a second chance at being a good father but the second chance at life. I don't care how sick I get it's not it's not worth losing my family. Sick from going through withdrawal, a heroin addict who stops using gets physically ill, with intense flu-like symptoms and extreme anxiety.

Mike Heffron, like Olivia, grew up in an upscale Ohio suburb. He knew the pain of withdrawal well. Back in 2013, Mike and his friend Joe Lagore went through that hell. You gotta do it every day. You can't walk, you're sick, you're puking.

Here in about 30 seconds, I will... the whole world will be lifted off my shoulders. I got 33 and then you're 15. That makes $48. $50. Mike Heffron and a friend, Joe LaGore, are going through withdrawal.

So they're looking for their next fix. You got a ride? I'm still without a ride, bro. come see me or I'll meet you. This is the two of them back in 2013 caught in a desperate moment.

If it's seriously 75 it better put me on my ass and I'm not trying to be put on my ass right now. 75. It was kind of outrageous. They shot up heroin that morning. But if they don't get another fix soon, they'll get what's called dope sick.

They are physically craving the drug. You need so much, you gotta use probably every three to four hours. You start getting sniffles, eyes water, chills, lashes.

It just takes your body over. They shoot up just to feel normal. You actually feel like you're really dying. I would actually pray to God to kill me.

I don't want to live that way. It's the worst feeling in the world. They both have tried to quit. Mike's been in and out of a local rehab center nicknamed The Cat House.

I'm sure they're tired of seeing me at The Cat House. I've been there so many times. I've been there probably three times in the past, since October.

They've lost their jobs, their students, spouses and their children. I have one girl, my daughter is 12 and my son is 6. And I love them to death. In this picture she was probably not even a year old in this picture, probably three in this picture. Mike was raised in an upper middle class family in the Cincinnati suburbs. I grew up in a somewhat wealthy family.

I was very, very fortunate that I had both parents that loved me. And luckily they loved me enough to provide me a very good childhood. That's me, I was in the tournament. I had perfect, perfect swing.

Yeah, I love sports, especially golf. And every single day is about, after my sophomore year, it was about golf. You know, that's all I played.

Mike's father, Dennis, encouraged him to play. I would drop him off at the golf course on my way to work at 7 o'clock, and I'd pick him up at 5 o'clock in the afternoon on my way home from work. He was literally there all day, and he played golf.

all day, all summer. In high school, I went to every golf match that he played in. You know, he was there. Me and him were real close. And I felt like I let him down huge.

Let him down. When he started doing drugs, first smoking marijuana, then prescription pills and cocaine, and finally heroin. He admitted it, that he was on heroin. And I asked him, I said, Michael, how could you do that?

No. knowing full well what it's going to do to you. And he said, Dad, he said, I tried it once. And then I tried it again. And I couldn't stop trying it.

Hey, what's his number? What's his number? Okay.

Some parents, it seems to me, often have to make this decision between the tough love of like, that's it, we're cutting you off, or I'd rather know where you are and know where you're sleeping. What was that conundrum like for you? Everybody preaches tough love, okay? I couldn't do it.

Because in my mind, I thought that we'd get a phone call one day and they found him dead. But my dad, he still talks to me. He just doesn't. He wants me to get better and right now I can't get, I've checked myself into rehab.

I just can't get through the dope sickness part. Uh, yeah, what about that guy from yesterday that's, um, uh... or whatever that you introduced me to or whatever. The 658 number. Then, after scoring more heroin, Mike and Joe prepare to shoot up again.

Okay, it's ready for shoot. The life of hell. Here in about 30 seconds, I will, the whole world will be lifted off my shoulders.

That's exactly how I feel right now. Mike says he wishes he'd never let someone persuade him to try heroin that first time. If I would have known that it does this to you, and if I would have known that I would be like this. You know, a year later, I would have told him to go to hell.

I would have straight up told him to go to hell. I would have never stuck that needle in my arm. Never in a million years. He says heroin has robbed him of his life.

and his future. I'd love to see my kids grow up, and I know if I keep using, I won't get that opportunity to see them grow up because I'll probably end up dead. This drug will kill me eventually if I keep using.

Ten months after this interview, Mike died of a heroin overdose. He was 34 years old. Even though Olivia and Tyler vow to quit when she finds out she's pregnant, they continue using heroin.

A month later, Tyler checks into a rehab facility, this one in Las Vegas. Olivia is faced with a tough decision. Yeah, I was pregnant, and I actually terminated the pregnancy.

And that was really hard for me to do, because normally I'd never do something like that. I wouldn't even think about it. But I thought that I couldn't imagine myself having a child right now.

It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to anybody, especially as a child. You're going to head off to rehab? Yeah, tomorrow I'm going to go to a detox is what it is. I'll probably be there for like seven to ten days, and then I'll come home.

And I'll do like intensive outpatient where I'll go like three times a week to groups and counselors and can stay clean. Are you nervous about it? Yeah, I am.

Yeah, I'm nervous. I'm really nervous. What are you nervous about?

I'm nervous about coming home afterwards. Why? I just, I hope I can be strong enough and not let that evil take over me.

Do you worry that you're going to die? Um. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's hard. You're not really thinking about that when you're doing it. But I know that the reality, I know that I could, yeah, because I've had people overdose in front of me, and it is scary, you know.

But when it comes to yourself, you just... You don't think about it. You just don't. I think there are a lot of people who would say, but you have a kid. Like, can't you just get it together for your kid?

If it wasn't for Callie, I'd probably be dead already. She's the reason that I'm just holding on still. Olivia Deland's mother, Carmen, knows the difficulties that lie ahead.

Olivia has already been to rehab. five times. It's not like you just go to rehab or detox and then rehab and you're done. And I used to think that myself.

I always wondered, well, they went to treatment, you know, why aren't they better? I didn't realize that the hardest part comes later. So it's a forever thing. It's a forever struggle.

Dealing with Olivia's addiction has drained Carmen and her family. both financially and emotionally. I've gotten to the point where I've told Olivia, I feel really bad for you. I feel helpless.

I can't help you. It's almost like I had to let her go. I said, but I've come to the point where it's either you or all of us, this whole family. I have to make a choice between you or all of us. It's now up to Olivia to get the treatment she needs.

Today, she's packing to go to the detox center when she gets a text from her friend, Miranda. Miranda just messaged me saying that if somebody can get her right now, she's got $40. And she called someone and they said they could hook it up. So basically, she's wanting to go get drugs right now.

It's such a temptation. You know, I went into this population area looking like a deer in headlights. I was completely out of my element. It was really scary. It was really, really frightening.

And I didn't have anything to do but sit and think. Sarah Cordenbrock spent 54 days locked up here in the Kenton County Detention Center after her parents had her arrested. Jail forced her to take a hard look at her heroin habit. I turned into such a thief and a liar and just, you know, I would walk into family functions and the women grabbed their purses. What was it like to get out of jail?

Wonderful. Were you clean by then? Oh yeah. And you felt like you were ready to turn it around? I felt like I needed to go into a treatment.

I was ready for a change. I was ready for anything but the life that I was living. Sarah's parents were at a breaking point when they drove her to Crossroads Rehabilitation Center in Indiana back in 2012. From this point forward... It's going to be... Actions are going to tell the tale.

Exactly. Because we don't buy words. No.

Anymore. But, I mean, you talk the game. So, I know you know. Yeah.

I know you know exactly what you're supposed to do. I know. She would spend the next 45 days here. I mean I've been an inpatient and an outpatient and I really just went to shut everybody up. And until I had to face the chaos of my life and go sit...

in jail for two months. That was my bottom. After getting out of rehab, Sarah managed to stay clean.

Through a support group, she eventually met the man who would become her fiancé, Eric Kyle. They have a daughter together, Ella Grace. Do you feel like you've dodged a bullet? I feel like I have a second chance. I'm able to live and enjoy my life.

Because I didn't enjoy it before. It was just an existence. It wasn't really living.

What makes you think you won't go back to using heroin? Do you think about it? No.

Never? You know, I didn't have any type of a purpose. And my daughter means the world to me. And there's no way I am willing to give up my family for a drug ever again in my life. Nothing is worth my family.

Looking back on her life, Sarah says she regrets all the time she wasted. I wasted seven years doing nothing but getting high. You know, I didn't accomplish any of these dreams that I wanted to do.

What did you want to do? I wanted to go away to school and play ball. I wanted...

To experience college like a normal 20-year-old. You know, I wanted to be able to have those memories. And I didn't get any of those memories. Now she's making new memories. I'm getting little braids and curls and kind of twisted and an updo.

I'm excited. Sarah is getting married. Okay, I'm going to go get girls'bows, and then are we going to put your dress on, Sarah? Yes. You need your sister up here.

Yes. Like a lot of little girls, I couldn't wait to pick out my wedding dress and plan my wedding, and that was something that was so exciting to me. I wanted to be married, and I wanted to have kids, and when I got into the midst of my addiction, I just kind of pushed it aside.

I just thought it wasn't an option for me. And you never thought you'd be married? No.

I really, I think in when I was using really hard, I didn't think that I was going to live long enough to get married. As she walks down the aisle, her parents are proud of how far their daughter has come. That was a great day.

That was a great day. It was a day that I didn't think I was going to get. Sarah, if you'll repeat after me.

I, Sarah. I, Sarah. Take you, Eric.

Take you, Eric. You know, so I think my wedding day was just, they were so happy for me to finally be in a position where I wanted to be and have my happily ever after. I therefore pronounce that you are husband and wife.

Eric, may I kiss you right? Olivia Deland is still searching for her happily ever after. She's getting ready to go to the detox center and leaving her four-year-old daughter Callie behind.

What makes you think you're ready this time? I just know because I can't do it anymore. I just know. I just can't.

There's so many people dying and it's just, I just can't. She's getting older. I just can't do it to her anymore.

I can't. It's like killing me inside. Can you successfully kick your habit without moving out of town, giving up your friends, not ever seeing Tyler again?

I think that if I am wanting to stay clean, I'm going to have to not talk to any of the people that I go get high with ever again. Not at all. But just hours before the van from the detox center arrives to take her there, her friend Miranda starts calling and texting, asking Olivia to go get drugs with her. I'm thinking I want to go get high before I go, but I can't do that. It's just such a temptation for me not to just go right now.

Like if I wasn't having a driver pick me up right now, I'd probably do that before I went. Desperate, Olivia goes out to her car to retrieve the cotton swabs she used to shoot up the day before. I got the cottons that you use when we do this, and I just sucked out everything that I could out of the cotton from the dope that we used the other day. So, because I've used so much for so many years, it's really hard to hit my veins. My veins are just so used up.

She tries to shoot up once again. Alright, I give up. I don't even care. I'm gonna go smoke. I think that'll help.

Oh my gosh, you get here. God, you're calling. She's calling me again. It's like it's like pulling me like It's like a freaking force like just pulling me, like sucking me in, just like telling me to just like say screw it and leave.

This wouldn't be so hard if this guy wasn't coming, I'd just go get drugs and then go to treatment. It wouldn't be a big deal. The van from the detox center arrives.

She leaves the middle class suburb where she grew up. The journey ahead for Olivia. What could be the road to recovery?

Transcript for:Impact of the Suburban Heroin Crisis

Transcript for:
Impact of the Suburban Heroin Crisis