“He said he would be there when we got old and needed him.” It's a grim reality a growing number of families are facing. Opioid overdoses killed about 50,000 people in 2019 according to the CDC and during the pandemic, the problem has only gotten worse. The CDC reports in 2020 more than 69,000 people died from opioid overdoses. “I think I was in such shock,” Steele said. “I didn't really believe it. It was almost like you felt like you could go back and change it like it can't be true.” Terrie Andrews, Ph.D. is Administrator of Baptist Behavioral Health and Wolfson Children's Hospital. She said she has seen a huge spike in behavioral health emergency admissions especially among those between the ages of 16 to 26.