How bad is the national opioid drug crisis? Federal government statistics suggest that during the two hours I have been on the air today, at least eleven people in this country died of opioid related drug overdoses. That figure is a couple years old, however – it’s likely higher now.
Fifty thousand Americans are dying a year of such overdoses. That’s more than we lost annually in any war since World War II … except, we’re losing this war.
When I was young, I thought I knew all about heroin addicts. They were washed-up jazz musicians or prostitutes, the lowest of the low. Well, maybe there were a few tragic wounded veterans who had turned to heroin after they could no longer get morphine.
It never occurred to me that I would someday interview middle-aged housewives and high school athletes who were secret heroin addicts, or that I would meet the mother of a college student on the dean’s list who died of an overdose of heroin mixed with fentanyl.
I have never used any opioid drug – cocaine, heroin, any of it. But that’s not to say I feel superior to those whose lives have been a nightmare of addiction. There are only two reasons, as a matter of fact, that I don’t have an opioid drug problem. One is that fortunately I have never suffered constant and chronic pain that couldn’t be relieved by any normal medicine.
The other, frankly, is that I know that I have a naturally addictive personality. I am addicted to caffeine, meaning coffee, and cookies.
My cookie addiction isn’t especially good for my waistline or my teeth, but it is unlikely to cost me my savings, my family or my home. But opioids would destroy all I have and I know it, and I also don’t like feeling fuzzy-headed, or not being in control.
Some people only realize that when it is too late. I think the new Michigan Opioid Partnership is a good thing, and I hope it does more than expected to solve the problem. Frankly, I think it will have been worthwhile if it saves even a few people from the ravages of addiction.
But I strongly suspect that there is no one-shot silver bullet for dealing with the opioid crisis. We clearly need to get a lot more responsible and smarter about pain management. If medicine forces some 40-year-old with intractable back pain to buy heroin when she can no longer afford prescription drugs, then medicine has failed.
However, I suspect there is something of an existential crisis here too. Some young people clearly turn to drugs because of inner pain and emptiness, and lives that lack meaning and purpose. They need goals, and something to believe in, and perhaps most of all to believe in themselves. I am no psychologist, but I know that we need not only coping strategies, but finding positive ways to look at situations. We all eventually suffer failures, betrayals and disappointments. Yet I know there is nothing better, apart from love, than the pleasure in learning things and the satisfaction of work well done, whatever it is.
I have a hunch that overcoming addiction is going to be a harder battle for our society than winning most wars has been. I also suspect it may be a far more important one.
