Opioids A Bigger Problem Than We Realize

Anyone with kids or anyone with people prone to addictive behaviors in their lives needs to read Headline News host Carol Costello's opinion piece about the horrors of the opioid crisis.

It's all too easy to put your hand up and shield yourselves from the details in Costello's opinion piece, "Heroin addicts are your problem." But it's something that, like the opioid crisis gripping North America, that needs your attention. Even in Canada, where we are often tagged with the illusion of clean white snow and being so friendly we apologize to ATMs, opioids - specifically fentanyl and its derivatives where I currently live - are turning into a growing problem.

Alberta and British Columbia are thus far the two hardest-hit provinces by the crisis; according to The Globe And Mail, "fatal overdoses linked to fentanyl soared from 42 in 2012 to 418 in 2015."

Dr. Ann DiFrangia of Akron General Hospital told Costello that "Our medical examiners and coroners had to rent cooler trucks because they didn't have enough rooms to store the dead bodies for autopsy."

Cooler trucks for those who died from addiction.

That says volumes, if nothing else does.

And still, there are too many of us who merely dismiss those who are addicts as washouts with no hope. However, it's not being made any more challenging to obtain a fentanyl prescription in Canada; in 2015, doctors wrote enough prescriptions for the opioid so that one in two Canadians could have one. Conquering chronic pain is one thing, but when it's so incredibly easy to obtain a prescription for the highly addictive opioid, how can you possibly think that it's become more difficult for people to get hooked? In addition, in Canada, there are very few rehabilitation centers dedicated to helping people overcome fentanyl addiction, so the support to help addicts recover becomes even rarer, save for that offered by friends and families.

DiFrangia noted that part of the appeal of the drug might well be the effects it generates.

"People describe it (the high) as a trip to heaven," she said. "Nothing in the natural world gives you the same high. Not love, not sex, not... anything."

Heroin, another opioid, is also problematic, largely because it can be gotten for cheap.

"The drug hijacks your pleasure center and will not let go," Costello wrote.

Hijacking is a term we associate with terrorists and, in general, bad guys, and yet we continue to blame addicts for becoming who they are? While people can choose to take the drug or not before they start, and we all have that choice with other drugs like caffeine and alcohol - in fact, there are a good many addicts who we don't hassle because it's socially acceptable - why is it any different when we are dealing with someone who is caught in the grips of addiction?

When we're talking about a drug "hijacking" you, that means the control is no longer your own, and that you're having to fight an uphill battle to be free. We need to consider the tools that someone can use to beat back the hijacker and live life again - but we don't.

We either deny or we blame, and then we wonder why people aren't doing more. Have you ever tried to stop consuming coffee after years of drinking the stuff? Have you noticed how badly your head hurts? That's mild compared to what addicts go through when trying to come off an opioid, so in many ways, what's the motivation when it hurts so much to quit?

"Getting off of heroin, being without it after your body is used to it, is as close to a trip to hell as anyone will have in this lifetime," DiFrangia said. "We can tell them (addicts) that they are not going to die. But every cell tells them it's impending doom. [They feel like] 'if I don't get my next fix, [I'm] going to die.'"

Rather than pointing fingers and saying it's someone else's fault, perhaps we should start looking at the truth; that addiction is such a terribly painful disease that sometimes, the behaviors associated with it lead the non-addicts to think that there's choice in how they behave. Well, there isn't - not 100 percent. There are certain choices we make regarding behavior - how we react, for instance, when presented with certain information. A rational, healthy mind understands the choices that can be made in various scenarios, but the mind of an addict does not have that same luxury.

There may be understanding, on some level, that they need to quit the bad behavior, but due to the addiction, they can't make the next move. Hell indeed.

So why, then, should we all be concerned about the opioid crisis spreading across the world?

Bottom line: addiction is everyone's problem. There are so many functional addicts across the globe that we may not realize are addicts. We need compassion for those caught in the grip of addiction, and more supports available for those trying to get the drugs off the street. It's time perhaps that we also put stricter measures in place to prevent doctors from prescribing fentanyl in what appears to be a fairly easy manner. Even if we don't know an addict personally, odds are that there is someone known to you who might be struggling with an addiction, and when it comes to fentanyl and other opioids, you might not know until the call from the police.

It's not just "someone else." Not anymore.