this happens, at least a couple of times a week. >> brown: two years ago, journalist and author beth macy, etfellow roanoke resident, patricia and tess. macy tells their story, and thae of many , in a harrowing account that traces two decades of one of the worst drug crises in american history. it's called "dopesick." >> i heard it er and over from people who were struggling with opiod addiction. >> brown: you heard that phrase? >> that's the word they used. "i'm dope-sick, man," or "i was dope-sk when that happened." what does it mean? that means, like, excruciating withdrawal. they have sweats, diarrhea, chills, vomiting. and as somebody early on ithe book says, at the end of your journey, you're not doing it to get high, you're just doing it to keep from being dope-sick. >> brown: why did you take this on? >> it was just so much pain to process, what these families are going through. but this was a story i started following back when i was a newspaper reporter in 2012, and heroin had landed in roanoke, virginia, where i live, in a big way. >> brown: in "dopesick," macy focuses her repo

author beth macy tracks the opioid epidemic from its early days in rural america to the nationwide crisisve so much information in this book about how serious this is. we hear all the numbers put you started working on it six years ago and people were like don't use my name. i don't want to talk about it and now people are saying i want my story to be told because the numbers are astounding. >> the equivalent of a 9/11 happening every three weeks. 145 americans dead from opioid overdose and you're right. the stigma is still such that a lot of people don't want to talk about it but almost it's poimsable poi impossible to ignore. >> you tell the story you're at a grave site and a mother says to you i just want to know -- what did she want you to find out about her son. >> i don't understand why my burly, handsome, barely old enough to grow up, beard on his chin ended up dead on someone else's bathroom floor and she said something else that i heard a lot which is i thought it was just pills. and it had progressed to heroin and she never missed a day of work. so many people looking for the cu