(CNN) -- "I just screamed and cried. I knew my brother was gone." Michelle Branch lost her brother, Craig Elazer, on September 1, 2020, to a fentanyl overdose. He had been receiving support for his addiction, which he had struggled with since he was 12, but a changed world due to the coronavirus pandemic ultimately led to his untimely death. Branch's loss is one of tens of thousands in 2020. More than 93,000 people died from a drug overdose last year, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. This means that 2020 was the deadliest year on record for drug overdoses.