Darren was 13 when he started taking pills, which he claims were given to him by an adult relative. He used to feed them to me, Darren said. On fishing trips, theyd get high together. Jessica and Darren have never known a life of family dinners, board games and summer vacations. This right here is normal to us, Darren told me. He sat in a burgundy recliner, scratching at his arms and pulling the leg rest up and down. Their house was in better shape than many others Id seen, but nothing in it was theirs. Their bedrooms were bare. The kind of multigenerational drug use he was describing was not uncommon in their town, Austin, in southern Indiana. Its a tiny place, covering just two and a half square miles of the sliver of land that comprises Scott County. An incredible proportion of its 4,100 population up to an estimated 500 people are shooting up. It was here, starting in December 2014, that the single largest HIV outbreak in US history took place. Austin went from having no more than three cases per year to 180 in 2015, a prevalence rate close to that seen in sub-Saharan Africa.
