PRINCETON – Well before COVID-19 struck, there was another epidemic running rampant in the United States, killing more Americans in 2018 than the coronavirus has killed so far. What we call “deaths of despair” – deaths by suicide, alcohol-related liver disease, and drug overdose – have risen rapidly since the mid-1990s, increasing from about 65,000 per year in 1995 to 158,000 in 2018