Hundreds of Vermonters have died from opioid overdoses in the past quarter century. More than 8,000 are currently in treatment for opioid-use disorder. Countless others live every day with the despair of this disease. How did we get here? No single event sparked Vermont’s current emergency, but its momentum was building for more than a decade before then-governor Peter Shumlin named it a “full-blown heroin crisis” in his 2014 State of the State address. From the invention of OxyContin to a single night in January 2019 when the University of Vermont Medical Center treated seven overdose patients, our timeline tracks the epidemic in Vermont.

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Did we miss anything? We’ll update this timeline as the epidemic continues. Contact us at hooked@sevendaysvt.com.

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Hooked: How So Many Vermonters Got Addicted to Opioids

Why are so many people addicted to heroin in Vermont? Kate O’Neill weaves together memories of her late sister, Madelyn Linsenmeir, and conversations with Maddie’s friend Katie Counter as she reports on the history of the state’s opioid epidemic.

This article appears in Feb 20-26, 2019.

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In “Hooked: Stories and Solutions from Vermont’s Opioid Crisis,” writer Kate O’Neill explores the state’s opioid epidemic and efforts to address it using traditional journalism, narrative storytelling and her own experiences. Her sister, Madelyn...