We Can Prevent Overdose Deaths If We Change How We Think About Them

I’ve been living in recovery from opioid use disorder for eight and a half years, and this might be a weird thing to say about addiction, but I feel lucky—like I dodged a bullet. I was addicted to opioids in Florida throughout the early 2000s, during the heyday of pill mills that flooded the streets with powerful pharmaceuticals like OxyContin. I say I’m lucky because this was just before the drug supply turned into a toxic sludge of potent fentanyl analogues, mysterious tranquilizers, and deadly counterfeit pills. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I were using today. The chances of my survival in these dire conditions would be slim to none. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] There’s a saying that “dead people can’t recover,” and I know it’s true. In 2022, an average of 300 Americans died from an overdose every single day. That’s an average of 109,680 human souls. We’re losing far too many people to drugs because America has yet to fully commit to a culture, policy, and strategy focused on overdose prevention. One of the hardest parts about being an activist is getting people to care about problems that appear distant and far away. It’s all too human to perceive danger as striking someone else, somewhere else. We saw this play out with the COVID-19 pandemic. But we’ve long seen this play out with the overdose crisis in America. In 2017, the federal government declared overdoses ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized freelance Source Type: news