Mayday in Mayberry

“Back in the day, the worst thing people did was hide in a ditch and hurl field corn kernels at passing cars. ‘It used to be so Mayberry.'” But then came the opioid crisis, other drugs, an increase crime, and ultimately, a precipitous decline in life expectancy. WaPo’s Joel Achenbach on the perfect storm of bad trends that have left many small towns facing what sociologists call diseases of despair.