agriculture, manufacturing, fossil fuel mining, and drilling-experienced industry collapse over the past thirty years (Marcus and Krupnick 2017; Nelson 2016; Schafft and Jackson 2010). Concerned with the human impact of these economic changes, researchers and policymakers alike have decried a rural "brain drain"-an out-migration pattern by which bright, motivated, and educated young people flee their

The study of narrative sociology can be used to understand how rural first responders magnify aspects of their collective stories about the opioid crisis to deflect emotional frustrations they experience. Based on 31 interviews with frontline responders in four rural counties in Appalachia, we find that responders portray themselves as capable protagonists up against hamstringing policies, opioid using clients as "their worst," and their management of crises as a Sisyphean task. In constructing stories in this way, rural frontline responders temper frustration, and consequently sympathy, that contributes to a unique logic of care and control. This storytelling protects responders against

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