What this doctor learned about addiction after 40 years in medicine

Treat people with care and respect –

Oct 8, 2020 – What happened in Pittsburgh is instructive because the steel industry collapsed, and, along with that, communities collapsed, and drugs came in. When communities and cultures are wounded, drugs are more likely to come in.

What we’ve seen is a trend from primarily alcohol dependence in the country, to cocaine and prescription opiates, followed by intravenous heroin, supplanted by intravenous fentanyl.

Now the scary thing that we’re facing is increases in combinations of fentanyl with cocaine, and fentanyl with methamphetamine. What the cartels are doing is combining fentanyl with cocaine. People may not be aware that they’re using fentanyl, which may be one of the reasons that can account for the increase in overdose death rate over the last year or so.

In this state we’ve been largely spared methamphetamine. But no longer. Over the last year and a half it’s flooded into the state. The drug problem is quite severe and not showing any signs of slowing. In the midst of all of this, hidden, is high rates of alcohol dependence. Attention to it has been orphaned by the prescription opiate epidemic. It definitely kills more people per year than opiates do.