"In this photo made with a medium format film camera, Joshua Messer, 29, sits for a portrait in his aunt's home where he's currently staying, days after he overdosed, in Huntington, W.Va., Tuesday, March 16, 2021. Messer was a high school basketball star, heading to college on a scholarship. He still brags that he was such a star athlete he once met the governor of West Virginia. But addiction took hold, to alcohol and pills. ""I let my family down, now I'm trying to get it back together."" He is covered in prison tattoos, and he likes bright colors and funny socks: he had Bugs Bunny on one foot and Mr. Potato Head on the other. He spent nine years in prison for an addiction-fueled burglary he barely remembers committing. In prison, he got 2020 tattooed on his chest because that was the year he was to be released and supposed to be the year he was to be reborn. He'd gotten a job as a cook at a restaurant and won employee of the month. He planned to save up money and open a landscaping business somewhere, get his own place and his own cat. Messer said the pandemic created a ""circle of nothing,"" that drove him and other people he knows to using more drugs. He said he took heroin eight months ago for the first time and thought he could do it just once, but he woke up the next morning needing more. ""I look at some people and it's sad how they look,"" he said. ""I'm starting to look like that. It's sad. I'm not better than other people. But I'm better than letting something take control of my life. I feel like I should be better than this."" (AP Photo/David Goldman)"
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