Opioids and millennials – Opiate Nation

Benefits of Public Dialogue

John and I live in Melbourne, Australia with our daughter and her family several months of the year. Since our son’s death by overdose from heroin 5 years ago, we have become interested in and involved with some of the Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) programs there. We also receive news reports on current trends etc.

What is interesting to me is the contrast between the Australian approach to AOD use and the American approach. Australians accept that there will be drug and alcohol abuse in their society and therefore speak openly and candidly about it. A recent newsletter (Dec. 13, 2019) from VAADA (Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association) is a perfect example of their approach. It was an alert about “ increasing numbers of reports about very strong heroin in Melbourne, which has resulted in an increase in accidental overdoses.”

The alert asks providers in the AOD sector to alert their clients (heroin users) to this problem and to be careful and look out for their fellow users. They also urge providers to share specific harm reduction information to help reduce the risk of overdose, such as: get naloxone and keep it handy; try not to mix drugs (there is a lot of methamphetamine use mixed with heroin/opioid use); be smart about your tolerance, knowing it can change if you haven’t used for even a few days; and try not to use alone or in an unfamiliar place where you wouldn’t get help if you do overdose (which was the case for our son).

What We Wish We Had Known…

August 2nd was the 5th anniversary of our son, John Leif’s, death by overdose from heroin. As we look back over the years, there is so much information available now than there was for the families of young people addicted to opioids in the early years of this century. So much we wish we had done differently with this son of our hearts – if we had only known.

In the early years of his addiction and recovery programs, we learned how co-dependency and enabling went part and parcel with alcoholism and addiction in family systems. We read all we could about it and worked hard to change from enabling and need-based love to detaching and loving with “tough love.” Sadly, as we now understand, tough love does not work for opioid addiction, because as Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, says: “The concept of letting children hit bottom with opioids is not the best strategy, because in hitting bottom they may die.” Continue reading “What We Wish We Had Known…”

ANXIETY, Part 2: Appeal of Opioids to Millennials

Is there a particular reason that opioids have such an appeal to Millennials? In an article in the New Yorker Magazine (http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/02/americas-opioid-epidemic.html) entitled “The Poison We Pick,” Andrew Sullivan discusses the modern American life that we pioneered and how “epic numbers of American are killing themselves with opioids to escape it.” Sullivan goes on to say: “It is a story of pain and the search for an end to it. It is a story of how the most ancient painkiller known to humanity has emerged to numb the agonies of the world’s most highly evolved liberal democracy. Just as LSD helps explain the 1960’s, cocaine the 1980’s, and crack the 1990’s, so opium defines this new era. I say era, because this trend will, in all probability, last a very long time. The scale and darkness of this phenomenon is a sign of a civilization in a more acute crisis than we knew, a nation overwhelmed by a warp-speed, postindustrial world, a culture yearning to give up, indifferent to life and death, enraptured by withdrawal and nothingness.” Continue reading “ANXIETY, Part 2: Appeal of Opioids to Millennials”