WATCH – Almost Heaven, West Virginia –
August 8, 2020 – Santrock said the stress of COVID-19 along with isolation from the lock down in March caused him to overdose.
“We’re addicts. We love to taking the easy road out. When something goes wrong in our lives or gets hard we’ll just run back to it. It’s the easiest thing to do than easier getting through whatever it is sober,” Santrock said.
It’s a story all too common across the region. According to Cabell County Emergency Medical Services, last year there were 878 suspected overdoses, and so far this year there are 619.
Officials say they started to see the spike in overdose cases when the stay-at-home order was issued.
“We immediately shut everything off. Just shut it off. We had the highest relapse rate in a three day period I’ve seen in ten years,” Rocky Meadows, executive director and founder of Life House Ministries in Huntington, said.
