It’s publication week for my new book, Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy.
Focused on everyday people caught up in the worst drug scourge in history, it’s a coffee table book featuring the unvarnished stories of 80 fentanyl victims.
You will meet a baby who was 15 months old when she died from fentanyl, and a man nicknamed “Player” who was 63. You will meet veterans and teachers, chefs and stylists, mothers and sons, the granddaughter of Roger Troutman, and a hockey coach who survived cancer only to be undone by a single pill.
Some lived on the margins. Some had every advantage. They were people of all ages and backgrounds, from across the country and Canada.
Published by the nonprofit group PAX sapiens, the book’s goal is to take a drug epidemic that’s become highly impersonal and put a human face on it, to inspire leaders and health departments to devote greater resources to fighting the crisis.
When portrayed as statistics, deaths can be easy to ignore or compartmentalize. But this book doesn’t let you do that. When you see the giant color photos of these victims, and read about their lives, you realize they’re just like you.
The below excerpt from Lives Interrupted concerns a pair of twins from Maryland, both with incredible potential, yet struggling in separate, parallel lives.
Lives Interrupted excerpt
Ryan Williams and Matt Williams
Pasadena, Maryland
Ryan and Matt were fraternal twins, but when their sister arrived two and a half years later, people started thinking of them as triplets — all three of them. “We looked almost identical,” said their sister Katie Wargo with a laugh. “We used to tell Ryan he was the ugly twin.”
A natural comedian, Ryan did Jim Carrey impressions at the dinner table and could rarely sit still long enough to finish a meal. He made up the rules to every game, and if you didn’t like them, you were out. “He was very dominating,” said Katie, “but he was funny, so he could get away with it.”
Matt was the opposite: calm, easygoing, a people-pleaser. He accompanied Katie to her first concert, took her Christmas shopping, and purchased her full outfits with accessories just to be sweet.
Academically, everything came easy to Matt, while guidance counselors told Ryan that his learning disability made college unrealistic. Ryan refused to accept this, however, earning good marks and enrolling at Howard Community College — in part because it meant he could keep running.
Running was Ryan’s religion. He set the two-mile school record at Northeast High School — a mark that still stands more than two decades later — and ran the mile in the lightning fast time of four minutes and 32 seconds. In college he took All American honors.
Matt, meanwhile, had started welding at his father’s company at age 14. By the time he graduated high school, he was a master. “He was so talented at his trade that everybody wanted to work with him,” said Katie.
Beyond their talents, however, both boys struggled.
Ryan became a father during his last semester at Howard, choosing to come home and raise his son Gavin rather than transfer to a four-year college. In school he’d tended to avoid drugs, lest they interfere with his running, but now became addicted. Seeking treatment at a facility that accepted his Medicaid, he was told to come back in 30 days, once his insurance card arrived in the mail. Before that month was up, however, he died after using what he thought was heroin. It was 2015; he was 30 years old.
Matt’s drug issues started as a teen and went on for years. In 2018 he passed after using what he thought was crack cocaine. Neither twin appears to have sought out fentanyl, but it managed to find both of them.
The losses were staggering, particularly considering they were twins and died in such similar ways. Katie and their mother Denise Williams founded an initiative called Sound of Silence, which brings interactive substance use and mental health education into Anne Arundel County middle and high schools. Their flagship program, House of Addictions, uses escape rooms, driving simulators, and hands-on activities to teach kids about the dangers of drinking and drugs. Anne Arundel County Public Schools now hosts it as an annual field trip.
Ryan’s son Gavin, now 17, was adopted by Katie and her husband. He is a standout baseball player who plans to play in college. At home he shares a bedroom with Katie’s biological son Nate, two years younger than Gavin, who has guitars covering his bedroom walls and is a great musician just like Matt was. Each boy keeps his side of the room differently; one neat and motivational, one gloriously chaotic, just like the twins did.
“Gavin and Nate are Ryan and Matt through and through,” said Denise. “They never left. They’re right here in this house.”
exceptional work with your talent.