At one meeting, Loyd tried to explain the science behind addiction—that it was a chronic brain disease, and relapses were to be expected—when a woman in the audience interrupted to ask, “Just how many chances are we supposed to give somebody?” He tried to appeal to the group’s humanity, as Gaeta had done in Boston, pointing out that addiction already was in their neighborhood. Simply turning their heads away out of fear or sanctimonious denial was equivalent to enabling the spread of overdose deaths—quite possibly, even, in their own families.
