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AUSTIN, Ind. At the height of rural America’s worst drug-fueled HIV outbreak, Jerrica Hall stole and traded sex to feed her unrelenting craving for opioid pills she crushed and injected an addiction that gripped many in this town of 4,100.
In 2015, she walked into an Austin trap house where she used drugs. Inside, a group of friends had their heads down, crying. Everyone had been diagnosed that day with HIV.
She’d shared a used needle once, too, and soon caught the quickly spreading virus. With a 3-month-old child and a dearth of local addiction support, hopelessness led soon to an overdose.