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Mass. General is one of the first US hospitals to embed recovery coaches on care teams. Drug treatment centers are increasingly hiring coaches as well, and cities hit hard by the opioid epidemic are sending these coaches out to the homes of residents who have overdosed and into police station holding cells. (Kowalczyk, 10/11)

Attorney General Mark R. Herring announced Tuesday that he has secured 80,000 drug disposal kits as part of his ongoing effort to ease the deadly toll of prescription painkillers and heroin in Virginia. Beginning Nov. 1, the attorney general’s office will distribute about 50,000 kits statewide with the help of the Virginia Department of Health. The rest of the kits will be available to hospitals, law enforcement agencies, pharmacies and nonprofits through an application process on the attorney general’s website. (Friedenberger, 10/11)

Virginia officials will be handing out thousands of drug disposal kits designed to allow residents to safely get rid of unused prescription opioids. Attorney General Mark Herring said 80,000 drug deactivation kits were recently donated by the Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. (10/12)

In July of this year, the Orleans Parish Coroner announced that heroin and opioid overdoses had already killed 65 people in New Orleans, eclipsing the city's murder rate and the overdose death toll for 2015. Such statistics shock Dr. Arwen Podesta, even as she confronts the city's opioid epidemic on a daily basis. (Lipinski, 10/11)

Drug addiction isn't just a bad habit. It's a complicated, chronic brain disease that requires treatment, according to public-health officials. But stigma and misunderstanding make addiction difficult for people to explain and understand, especially someone who hasn't experienced the effects of its ruthless grip, said Pickerington resident Heidi Riggs, who lost her 20-year-old daughter, Marin, to a heroin overdose in 2012. (Neese, 10/12)

The addiction rehabilitation industry in the United States, including drugs, alcohol and other substances, is a $35 billion business. That’s what the more than 2.5 million people who receive treatment -- or their insurance companies -- spend on care each year. That doesn’t even count the 21 million or so other people who are addicted but don’t seek help, according to recent numbers from the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (Candelaria, 10/11)