With no one left to lie to, Nathan Casburn dropped to his knees and cried out to God—the plea of a dying man. Surrounded by an endless horizon of flat Delta cropland, Casburn was pulled from the deepest hole of a 15-year drug addiction.
Like a freight train through a veil, an opioid crisis has roared across rural America and farm country. Since 1999, over 1 million people have died from drug overdoses nationwide, with two-thirds of the deaths attributable to opioids.
Casburn is a most unlikely survivor. In plain fashion, he pulls no punches and tells a hellish tale of loss and triumph on the farm—without a shred of blame cast beyond his own shadow.
Clean. Redeemed. Grateful to the core.
“Never, never believe that you can’t get out of drugs,” he urges. “You’re never too far gone. The only thing you’re not coming back from is death.”
The Sentinel
In the pocket of the Mississippi Delta, Tallahatchie County (pop. 12,000) is blanketed by cotton, rice, and soybeans bordered by endless turnrows, irrigation ditches, and cypress sloughs. Simply, agriculture is the blood of the region.
Rubbing railroad tracks roughly five miles northwest of the dual county seat in Sumner, Casburn, 36, and his father, Rea, 72, grow 1,300 acres of wheat and double-crop soybeans, with corn sometimes popping into the mix.
In the early 1900s, the Casburn clan pulled stakes in Illinois, crossed the continent to New Mexico, and doubled back to Mississippi. They bought land in Tallahatchie County, cleared bottomland hardwood, constructed a sawmill, and built a Western-inspired farmhouse (mirroring a design from New Mexico) that became the anchor of an extensive operation including a commissary and scores of sharecropper dogtrots.
The house still watches over the property—a sentinel at the front of the farm. “I think about my forefathers a lot,” says Casburn, pointing toward the white stucco home, while leaning against the faded cypress boards of an old barn and crib, surrounded by wagon wheels and machinery skeletons. “What they went through to make a life makes me appreciate what I have all the more. They did it all with mules and single row equipment.”
Yet, Casburn once came within a few breaths of throwing away the legacy. “Have you ever tried to fill a God-sized hole with anything that’ll fit?” he asks. “That was me.”
Wink and Nod
Video games. In the 1990s, a keyboard, console, and controller hinted at a young boy’s susceptibility. “I played every waking moment I could, to the point of fixation,” Casburn explains. “I knew I was different from the other kids and not in a good way; I was geared toward escapes. In my case, an obsession with video games was a symptom of my unhealthy mindset.”
Into his teens, obsession jumped tracks from gaming to drinking, and Casburn’s transition was nuclear. Drink to a drunk.
“The first time I drank, I ended up on the floor—out cold,” he recalls. “That became my standard way of drinking. Looking back now, I was out of control right from the start, and that’s a razor’s edge in the Delta’s drinking culture with copious amounts of alcohol available. Everyone makes their choices and mine went from bad to worse to off-the-charts.”
Any time away from the crop rows or schoolhouse became the starter’s gun to crack a beer or turn a bottle. And then came marijuana. And then came cocaine and stimulants. A blitz of substance abuse.
In 2004, on backroad gravel, Casburn, a high school junior, broke two vertebrate in an alcohol-related car crash. The subsequent pain management became a party, legitimized by medical approval in the age of OxyContin.
Kicked back in a recliner, while the sounds of farming machinery grumbled in the distance, Casburn eyeballed the prescription label against the orange tint of an OxyContin bottle: Take one pill every four to six hours.
If one is good, three is better.
“I floated away from that recliner,” Casburn recalls. “Total euphoria. A flip of my brain switch. An artificial sense that all was well in the world. Every since I was a boy, this was the feeling I’d been looking for. This was the fill for the hole in my life and I wanted it forever.”
And when the bottle was empty? A quick dial to the doctor and a speedy script refill. All legit with barely a wink and nod.
Casburn was in love. Welcome to the wonder world of opioids.
Tap the Vein
Slipping deeper in the hole, Casburn was primed to shake and move in a faster lane than sleepy Sumner. To hell with the farm.
“I had no intention to stay on farm. I hated it. Everyone in the Delta knows everyone else’s business, and my business was self. Therefore, I resented my rural community instead of myself. That’s the bitterness of a fool.”
Next stop, 75 miles west to Ole Miss and Oxford, and a chain of descent in a college town: DUI’s, car wrecks, arrests, hospitalization, overdoses, academic probation, and legal woes.
Whistling past the graveyard, Casburn’s opioid use continued to climb.
“You can’t juggle addiction and work or do schoolwork or anything,” he says. “Eventually, the pieces crash. It’s only a matter of time.”
By 2014, with no job, no degree, and no prospects, Casburn was skinned: OxyContin and other legal pharmaceuticals were out of his price range. He responded with the most hellish economic decision of his life. Go home to the farm and tap the vein. Heroin.
Skin on Bone
“I was paying $100 or $150 per day for Oxy or other opioids. However, I knew I could switch to snorting heroin and my cost would drop to $20 per day. It sounds crazy, but I was so addicted that the numbers made sense,” Casburn explains.
Out of the heroin gate, Casburn’s estimate was spot-on—$20 per day to feed the devil inside. However, inside a single month, his heroin use exploded, and he was forced to find new means of using; new ways to get a bigger bang. The needle. Injecting.
Suddenly, his per day costs for heroin rose to the same level as script pills, yet the heroin sucked the life from his body at a far faster rate, ravaging Casburn’s frame from a lean 140 lb. to a ghastly 108 lb.
Skin on bone. The boy on the farm was gone.
“I remember putting the needle in my arm and thinking, ‘There is no coming back,’” Casburn says. “I was a full-blown addict, junkie, and whatever other description applies. All the lies I told, all the things I stole from family, all the deceit, all the time I wasted, all my overdoses, and all my betrayals of friends. There was literally nobody left to do wrong to, because I’d done wrong to everyone.”
Rain or shine, addiction woke Casburn at dawn every day, demanding a morning fix. In the rows, he was never without a pill or powder—some sort of drug band-aid to keep the addiction sated until noon. He worked just enough to keep from getting tossed off the farm. Whether irrigation, fieldwork, or driving in the cab, by mid-day, the cravings were screaming.
“I’d take right in the field if necessary. I’d leave if needed. I’d have the drugs delivered to the farm. If my dealer called and said, ‘Now,’ then I was gone. Anything to push back the pain. Imagine the worse flu times 10 or 20 that literally never leaves your body—except that you can make it disappear with a phone call.”
Casburn truly was alone. By his choice, a dead man walking the farm with no companion but guilt.
A Father’s Love
In 2017, at 29, Casburn’s body gave out. After two weeks in intensive care due to a heart valve infection derived from heroin use, he returned home by the slimmest of margins, and checked into rehab. No dice.
Three weeks after rehab, Casburn was back on the needle, injecting prodigious amounts of heroin to stay functional. Physically incapable of going to the fields, Casburn was holed up in the stucco farmhouse, sitting in a room lined with books—his father’s library—when he saw death.
“I had an out of body experience with no drugs involved,” Casburn recalls. “I saw everyone going on with life, and me stuck right there dying as an addict. Right then, in the library, I dropped to my knees and threw up a prayer in desperation, but I meant every word. I called out to God for mercy and forgiveness. I told Him that if He would help me, then I’d do everything He asked. That prayer was answered.”
The deceit was over. The self-pity was gone. Casburn had a toehold on life. “Despite all the terrible things I did, God never abandoned me. The separation I experienced was caused by me deciding not to seek Him.”
Casburn immediately reached out to former addicts and friends for help—one day at a time, step by step. “All the people around me in our farming community came to help me in one way or another. The same people I ran from were nothing but happy for me. I once was a maniac to get drugs, and I became a maniac to get off drugs. I went crazy fighting drugs because I was never going back in that hole.”
Seven years after crashing to his knees, Casburn has earned a stellar reputation and built a thriving farm life. Along with 1,300 soybean acres, he grows production vegetables, and tends a menagerie of livestock: 100 rabbits, 50 chickens, 20 quail, 8 goats, and 3 cows. In March 2024, he and wife Caitlin were blessed with a baby girl—Nora.
“I have nothing to escape from anymore,” he says. “I’m blessed with a beautiful, loving wife; a newborn; and a farm. I’ve regained the trust of my family and community. God has given me all of this even though I deserve none of it. I’ve been forgiven and I’m grateful beyond words for every member of my family and every friend I have. They all are what fuel my fire each day.”
As Casburn speaks of gratitude, his voice quivers at the mention of a particularly stalwart source of support—his father, Rea. “I wouldn’t be here today without the love of my dad. He refused to give up on me. In my darkest addiction, I used to wonder why my dad wouldn’t wash his hands of me and be done. Now I have a child and I found the answer. It’s only made me love my dad that much more.”
The Brink
The devastation evidenced in opioid statistics is staggering. From 1999 to 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 645,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. The deaths fit into three opioid overdose phases: post-1999 legal prescriptions, 2010-plus heroin use, and a 2013-plus synthetic epidemic anchored to fentanyl.
A 2017 survey by American Farm Bureau Federation and National Farmers Union noted that up to 74% of U.S. farmers have been directly impacted by the opioid crisis.
On average, 130 people die daily from opioid use, and Casburn’s opioid-farm story almost came with a toe-tag. “We all have choices. I made mine and paid a tremendous cost. I went my own way and it almost cost me my life.”
What advice does he have for farmers, or rural Americans, or anyone on the addiction path?
“You may live here in Mississippi, or up in Iowa, or some other faraway place and feel alone, embarrassed, ashamed, and guilty because everyone you were raised with is going to find out you’re a drug addict. They already know. Reach out for help now.”
“The best time to quit was to never have started. The second best time to quit is right now,” Casburn concludes. “You’ve never done anything that God won’t forgive you for. It’s not true that you can’t get out of the drug hole you’re in. Never, never believe that it’s too late.”
Indeed. Spoken by a survivor back from the brink. A farmer reborn.
For more articles from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Power vs. Privacy: Landowner Sues Game Wardens, Challenges Property Intrusion
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
American Gothic: Farm Couple Nailed In Massive $9M Crop Insurance Fraud
Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
