As opioid deaths have soared in recent years, police departments and strangers with cameras have started posting raw, uncensored images of drug users passed out with needles in their arms and babies in the back seats of their cars. The videos rack up millions of views and unleash avalanches of outrage. Then some other viral moment comes along, and the country clicks away.

But life is never the same for the people whose bleakest, most humiliating moments now live online forever. In interviews with The New York Times, they talked — some for the very first time — about the versions of themselves captured in the videos.

Ms. Hemphill’s mother watched the 2016 video of her overdose. Her friends saw it. Even her daughter, now 11, watched the images of Ms. Hemphill passed out beside a guardrail in West Deptford, N.J., her stomach exposed as the medics rushed in. “Why bother saving her?” asked one YouTube commenter. “I would’ve let her die,” said another.

“When you type my name in, that’s the first video that pops up — an overdose video,” Ms. Hemphill said.