Matthew Davidson was beating his heroin addiction. The 31-year-old was attending group recovery meetings. He had a restaurant job he liked.
He was a doting uncle to a baby nephew. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. Davidson lost his job. He started staying home alone in his apartment near Georgetown, Kentucky — depressed and yearning for his recovery support group that had stopped gathering in person, said his cousin Melanie Wyatt.
On May 25, his girlfriend came home to find him dead of a drug overdose. Davidson was part of a surge in overdose deaths that hit Kentucky this spring.