The Overdose Warrior

WHEN HER ELDERLY mom was dying in the hospital, Claire McCaskill, the Demo cratic senator now facing a tough reelection fight in Missouri, noticed a disturbing pattern. Betty Anne McCaskill, 84, would seem energetic and upbeat until nurses came to check her pain levels on a 1-to-10 scale. Then she’d moan, “Ten! It’s a 10!”

“She knew that the more she said 10, the more opioids she’d get,” says McCaskill, whose mom died in 2012. “There’s no question my mother was addicted at the end of her life.”

People chat around us in a gilded reception hall outside the Senate floor, their conversations echoing off the marble walls, but McCaskill sits chin on one hand, leaning forward, green eyes unwavering. She talks as if she’s confiding in a good friend, though in reality she’s squeezing in a quick interview between votes. “The other part of the story about my mother,”