This article originally appeared at Latest.com

West Virginia is a land of stunning natural beauty and church-going folk. It is also hiding a deadly secret.

The people of West Virginia are dying from drug abuse at an alarming rate.

Last year, 628 West Virginians died of an overdose, mostly due to misuse of prescription painkillers. That is a rate of one or two devastated families every day, all year long.

Yet, painkillers are not the only problem. Heroin use is also on the rise.

The face of addiction in West Virginia. Denise Hughes is now in recovery (Screenshot via PBS.org)

In fact, the number of drug overdose deaths per year now far surpasses the number of people who die in car accidents in the state.

It has also given the Mountain State a dubious distinction; West Virginia now has the highest rate of fatal drug poisonings in the entire nation, according to a 2015 report by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Drug abuse has also taken a huge emotional toll on West Virginia’s families, something Cary Dixon knows too well.

Cary nearly lost her son to drug abuse. He is now in prison, something Cary admits she “never dreamed” would happen to her child. Cary’s friend was not as lucky. Her daughter died as a result of drugs.

“We raise our children in loving homes. We teach them morals and values,” Cary said at a panel at the East End Family Resource Center in Charleston on October 21. “We wonder what is happening when the grade starts slipping, when things that used to be enjoyable for our loved ones no longer interest them.”

Cary Dixon talks about the devastation of drug abuse in her own life on October 21 as President Obama listens (Screenshot via The Charleston Gazette)

Just minutes before, President Barack Obama and the Director of National Drug Control Policy, Michael Botticelli, had addressed those gathered and promised to funnel more funding to help stop addiction in the state and across the nation.

It was Cary’s words, though, that truly captured the devastating cost of drug abuse to the Mountain State.

“The ones of us who are fortunate, we lay awake at night and we plan our loved ones’ funerals in our mind,” Cary said, summing up the immensity of West Virginia’s loss. “The ones of us who aren’t fortunate actually do plan the funerals, in reality, of our loved ones. And this is where addiction has taken us. This is where substance abuse has taken us.”

Photo Credit: Heroin syringe via Flickr/Thomas Marthinsen