I’ve known over three guys from my really small college class who have died from an opioid overdose. They were wealthy, preppy types who you just didn’t see getting into drugs in that way. They also seemed to have close family members who would have intervened. Is that a trend?
Addiction has never discriminated between race, religion, or socio-economic status. Every demographic is and always has been equally susceptible. What we’re seeing presently is a dramatic increase in three key areas:
1. Accessibility – the prescription epidemic that began in the mid-90’s spread billions and billions of opioid pills into every corner of the country. (259M opioid prescriptions filled in 2012 alone, estimated to be over 4B total pills, in a single calendar year.) The addiction that resulted from these pills subsequently brought heroin and various other synthetic opioids into every corner of the country. Then the dark web went mainstream and that allowed a buy/sell forum for the portion of the population that wasn’t going to take the risk of finding a dealer on the corner. What once involved a significant amount of risk has now been reduced to the click of a mouse in the privacy of your home from a platform offering seller ratings and buyer protection.
2. Acceptability – the proliferation and rise in popularity of opioids and heroin has lowered the threshold of what it takes for someone to first use. If all of your friends are trying something, you’re more likely to try it. Recreationally using opiates has become socially acceptable for a greater portion of the population than it was 25-years ago.
3. Toxicity – now that we have more people using opiates than ever, they’re also deadlier and more toxic than ever been. The introduction of synthetics like Carfentanil (10,000x more potent than Morphine) have been largely to blame for meteoric rise in opioid related overdose deaths.
I am so sorry to hear about your classmates, but their story is an all too common story. Research on the opioid crisis shows that people across the socioeconomic spectrum are being impacted by opioid overdoses. Research also shows that many people who abuse prescription opioids perceive them to be safer than illicit drugs like heroin because they prescribed by a doctor and dispensed by a pharmacy; thus people do not appreciate the very real risks of addiction and overdose posed by these drugs. And increasingly the path of prescription opioid abuse leads to heroin and now illicit fentanyl abuse and overdose. That is why focusing on prevention and educating the public about the risks of prescription and illicit opioids is so critically important. We also are working to expand the use of naloxone to reverse opioid overdoses in order to prevent rising numbers of opioid overdose deaths.
