Drug and alcohol overdoses are the leading cause of accidental death among young people in the northeast and other parts of the country. The estimated loss of life is alarming. ~ Casa Columbia
The heroin epidemic is from overdoses climbing at a drastic rate. We’ve seen a 283% increase in the number of this deaths as of November, 2017. The world is baffled and the community is desperately seeking a solution to stop drug-related deaths. As a former addict who works with many other addicts and their families, I will share with you a realistic solution.
Can We Solve the Heroin Epidemic by Making Heroin Harder to Get?
The war on drugs has been clearly ineffective and making heroin less accessible would cause more problems than it would solve. There would be more burglary of habitats, don’t think heroin being more expensive would stop people from avoiding being sick as a dog after ceasing usage. Another probable outcome is it would create a market for a new research chemical to replace it that could cause far more damage. This is how desomorphine AKA “Korkodil” became popular in Russia as a cheaper alternative to Heroin. Tightening the war on drugs has caused K2 and bath salts to emerge from research chemical labs which are far more dangerous than the drugs they’re meant to replace. As dangerous as heroin is, there’s always a worse drug just like there’s always a bigger fish. Making heroin harder to get can cause a new epidemic of unmeasurable proportions.
So What Can We Do?
The truth is there’s little to nothing we can do for a heroin addict that doesn’t want to be sober. If you’re reading this, you may have suffered addiction or love someone who suffers. If a loved one can’t help get an addict sober, what use does the government have? They don’t want to be backed into a corner and state the reality to the public, but as soon as we can accept we’re just as powerless over an addicts addiction as the addict is powerless over their addiction we can start creating realistic approaches to solve the heroin epidemic. Until then, we will run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off.
What Would Be My Approach?
First and foremost, for addicts that want to be sober there’s very little resources out there. This includes public speakers as sources of inspiration. It’s hard to inspire change in someone if you, yourself, haven’t made that change. More addicts who’ve gotten sober need to step forward and speak to the public about their experience and where they found their strength.
Narcan blocks the receptor sites heroin acts on within the brain and can stop the drug’s activity dead in it’s tracks. This can easily prevent a fatal overdose. Currently anyone can obtain narcan but it needs to be as easily accessible as possible. There needs to be more awareness spread that this exists. Unfortunately, this won’t stop the heroin epidemic, but it can help save a lot of lives. The reason being, is during an overdose a heroin addict is unlikely to utilize narcan which is why it’s rare for heroin addicts to call 911 and usually it’s someone who finds them.
Ibogaine has an incredible success rate at not only getting heroin addicts sober without the horrific sickness that accompanies a detox, but also reducing psychological cravings for an extended period of time. The treatment takes 24 hours and has saved many heroin addicts. However, ibogaine is a schedule 1 even though it has no recreational value, the organ toxicity is non-existent, and the LD50 is extremely high. It doesn’t make any rational sense why patients can’t undergo ibogaine treatment in the United States.
The medical field needs to stop capitalizing on death. The reason drug rehabilitation is outrageously expensive even though substance abuse counselors are extremely underpaid is, “You’re dying, how much is your life worth?” The owners of these facilities have a desperate need to own a Buggatti to compensate for their small penis. Females need to start learning to appreciate a small penis so owners of rehab facilities feel less need to gouge sick people so they can afford to overcompensate.
Finally, heroin should be legal. As backwards as this sounds, this would solve a lot of key issues causing overdose. There would be clean needles in a controlled setting where medical practitioners can monitor doses and have narcan available incase of an emergency. The problem with street heroin is that it can be laced with fentanyl which is more easy to overdose form than heroin. Also, since heroin purity varies, addicts have no idea what their dosage is. If they’ve been shooting 60% pure heroin for a while and dose high on 90% pure heroin they can easily overdose just from the potency variation.
I hope this article provided insight on how to stop the heroin epidemic. Subscribe to our channel and check out the embedded video for a more thorough video explanation from the author of this article!
Philip Markoff (Associate of Science) is an online influencer and thought leader on addiction education; he is known as his alias “CG Kid” who’s obtained a large audience primarily on YouTube as a vlogger and journalist. His current sobriety date from polysubstance chemical dependency is June 9th, 2013.