Today, Explained - Addicted and alone

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

The pandemic wiped out the slow but steady progress America had been making against another deadly disease: opioid addiction. The Washington Post’s Peter Jamison explains. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's hard to tackle two crises at once. Since March of 2020, all eyes have been on the pandemic, and we still lost hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States. And all that attention on the coronavirus meant much less attention on the opioid crisis.

And that meant the worst year for overdose deaths ever. More than 90,000 people died of an overdose in 2020 in the United States. That's a 30% jump from the year before. A lot of us didn't notice, but Rachel Lambert did. My name is Rachel Lambert, and I live in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. I work in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and I'm a state-certified peer recovery support specialist. We reached out to Rachel just before she started her shift at a treatment center in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Being a person in long-term recovery, you know, it's important for me to have those personal connections with people. And so over the last year with COVID,

you know, we were told to do the opposite. It was extremely difficult to go from this thriving recovery community, attending my 12-step meetings, attending the meeting before the meeting, attending the meeting after the meeting, just that sense of community and fellowship to then having to stare at screens and try to to accomplish the same meeting over zoom it just wasn't the same and rachel doesn't just treat addiction she's lived it you know my addiction started my senior year of high school basically I was on the volleyball sports team and had scholarships to go to different colleges and stuff. Any like potential scholarship was lost when I blew out my knee and had to have knee surgeries. Keep in mind, this was back in 2003 when they were still kind of marketing OxyContin as safe and non-addictive. Once you've found the right doctor and have told him or her about your pain.

So here it is, I'm 17 and the doctor is saying, here, take this medication. Don't be afraid to take what they give you. This will help your pain. Often it will be an opioid medication. And not once did anybody explain to me you're going to become physically dependent on these medications. So after that, when I wasn't getting the prescriptions anymore, a friend basically said, well, you know, this is the same thing as Oxycontin, but it's a lot cheaper and easier to get. And I didn't even know what it was.

I didn't ask what it was. I just snorted it. I just did it just to feel better. What was it? Oh, it was heroin. You know, that was my first introduction to heroin. And within about six months, I was injecting it with a syringe. How did you go from being addicted to opioids to helping other people who are addicted?

So on June 11, 2017, I was arrested for possession of cocaine and possession of heroin. So I was court ordered to treatment a diversion program. And it was during that time at the diversion program that I really discovered my purpose. And my purpose was to help other individuals who suffer from addiction. What did you discover in treatment? Yeah, I don't know why Motley Crue comes to mind. You know, you may have somebody who was a doctor at one point and got hooked on prescription pills, or, you know, you have somebody you look at and you're like, that is somebody's sweet little grandma. Like, what is she doing in here? But the one thing about it is that no matter anybody's background or what their story was before they came to those rooms, you know, the one thing that

matters the most is that we have all been through it. We have all earned our seat in those meetings. Community. Yeah. So having that connection with other people, that's super important for those in recovery. So what happens when the pandemic hits and you can't have those connections anymore? You see the highest number of overdoses that this country has ever seen. That's what happens. There was an extended period of time when, you know, we didn't leave our homes. And there was an extended period of time that my work phone just was not even ringing.

And that just really caused me to feel helpless as if I were just sitting on my hands, so to speak, while my population, my people are dying, you know, because the one thing that you don't want to tell an addict or an alcoholic to do, and that's to isolate, you know, that's the one thing that we are taught in early, early recovery, like whatever you do, don't isolate. Because then we get in our own heads and we start, you know, thinking about other stuff and it, it's just, you know, it's a recipe for death. Did you know anyone who passed? Did you lose anyone you loved? I did. I lost quite a few people actually that I personally knew.

One of which was a very good friend of mine who had four years in recovery. It was a thriving electrician. He had his own business. From the outside looking in, he had everything together. And then the pandemic hit and he passed away towards the end of May. What happened to him? He had everything together, pandemic hits, and he passes. Yeah. So he never really attended 12-step meetings. That just wasn't his thing, but he was very involved in his church and the congregation and the people that were there, you know, quite a few of them were also in recovery and that was his outlet. That was his version of recovery meetings, so to speak. So when the pandemic hit and the church door closes, they too tried to do

something over Zoom and it just wasn't the same for him either. You know, you don't have that physical hug when you walk into the room or the handshake or seeing the smiles and, you know, and having his own business. That too was really affected by the pandemic. And his phone started to ring less and less. His wife said that she would see him sometimes, you know, in the middle of the day, sitting on the couch, like constantly picking up his phone, just hoping that somebody would call him about a job. And that didn't happen. So, you know, he had gone down to his dad's house around Memorial Day weekend and had used and overdosed and passed away. Did you know while this was all happening that if the church doors had just remained open,

if mass had just moved outside, or if you guys could have kept your community meetings or your 12-step meetings, but found a way to socially distance, that that would have been crucial for so many people struggling with addiction. Did you have a sense of that? Did you tell anyone that? Absolutely. I was all for the reopening, try to social distance, try to, you know, keep everyone safe, but having that connection. Because when you are given the opportunity to physically go somewhere for a meeting, it just kind of gives you that sense of purpose. Like I have something to do. I'm going to go to this meeting. But when you're told, oh, you can just hop on your phone and do it over Zoom, when you're isolating, depression starts to set in, or maybe you're already thinking of relapse,

you're not going to get on your phone. Things are starting to look up. We have resources and agencies that have received COVID funds that are now able to help our population even more than before. We're, of course, a little concerned about this new Delta variant or whatever. But, you know, with that said, it's kind of like you're trying to fight an epidemic during a pandemic. And at this point, you really don't get to choose which one you fight. You have to fight both of them at the same time. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames.

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Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Several weeks ago, the federal government released new data showing that there were an estimated more than 93,000 fatal drug overdoses in the United States in 2020. Peter Jameson is a reporter for The Washington Post. He recently profiled Rachel and her community as part of a broader look at how the national opioid epidemic unfolded during the coronavirus

pandemic. To put that in perspective, that was the largest year-over-year increase in fatal drug overdoses in the history of this country. And it was also, if these numbers hold up, and if anything, they're likely to prove to be an underestimate when the numbers are finalized. The deadliest single year in the opioid epidemic, which has already claimed more than 900,000 American lives. Tell me, you know, we've been covering this opioid epidemic in the United States for years now on the show, but we haven't really because of coronavirus in a long time. Where were we coming into March of 2020 in the fight in this epidemic? So I certainly don't think anyone who's involved in this on the front lines of the opioid epidemic would say that we were anywhere close to declaring victory against the scourge of opioid addiction before COVID arrived. However, there were some reasons for cautious optimism. With the entry of fentanyl at a widespread level

into the United States, somewhere around 2014, 2015, we began seeing an incredible spike in overdose deaths. And fentanyl, for those of your listeners who are not familiar with it, is an extremely potent and extremely lethal synthetic opioid. Users who are dependent on opioids are drawn to fentanyl.

And the danger is if you get too much of the fentanyl, you can die. You can die. That's really what we saw play out for a few years in this country. But beginning around 2017, 2018, certainly trending into 2019, we were starting to see a decline in opioid deaths. For the first time in a decade, Maryland experienced a decline in opioid death rates. The number of overdose deaths in Pennsylvania appears to be on the decline. Finally, some relief. New numbers from state officials show Florida might be making a dent in the opioid epidemic. So there was some speculation that a combination of greater awareness of the dangers of fentanyl

and more robust treatment programs and addiction outreach programs were beginning to have some impact. And then the coronavirus pandemic arrived. So the social isolation is clearly a factor here. Were there other factors at play? Yeah, this is difficult to say. It's always kind of a guessing game from year to year why drug overdoses are trending up or down. In part, this is because this depends in large part on the operating of an international legal market, which we don't understand fully. But the people who follow this stuff closely, they seem to think it's some combination of the economic disruption of the coronavirus pandemic,

so widespread job loss. It's not a good thing for anybody, but it's especially not a good thing for someone who's a recovering drug user who depends on the structure and stability of regular work. Again, we are dealing with the omnipresence of a very lethal substance in most drugs, fentanyl. That's still the case. It was more so the case than ever in 2020. An increasing supply of deadly fentanyl also drove overdoses. Deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids were up 54 percent. And the lack of social connection that was enforced on people and the isolation that was enforced on people because of public health measures to contain the spread of the

coronavirus. You know, this is something that is in some ways unique to this particular form of medical treatment. From the very beginnings of people's efforts to maintain sobriety and recover from addiction, you know, going back to the 19th century and the Washingtonian society and inebriate homes up through the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Alcoholics Anonymous, may I help you? All right, if you don't want to drink anymore, you don't have to. You just got to do something about it. Some form of recovering alcohol or drug users helping each other has been a primary component of addiction treatment and mainstream addiction treatment. And what was it like for these communities, these therapy centers, these rehab centers to have to deal with the opioid crisis and the

coronavirus crisis at the same time? It's very difficult and there's no simple formula for how you do it. You know, at the time we published this story, the vaccination rate of people who had received at least one shot in Berkeley County was 38%. So this is one of those places that is vulnerable in this new wave of the pandemic that we're now facing. So it's a different calculus for people in a place like this where you've already got one longstanding public health crisis that you can't just ignore when you begin trying to turn back the coronavirus. And obviously the fight against the opioid epidemic should not come at the cost of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic or vice versa, but is there as much consensus, are there as many moonshot ideas to do something about this as there are on coronavirus, on COVID-19? In the immediate future, the answer is no. The opioid epidemic

is actually a rare issue where it has seemed there is bipartisan consensus about the urgency of this issue. Now, this varies on some of the details. There's certainly a political split on particular harm reduction measures such as syringe exchange that we've seen play out. But by and large, people recognize the seriousness of the opioid epidemic, regardless of political affiliation. But at the same time, you've just seen nowhere close to the investment in fighting opioids that you have in fighting COVID. So to put this in perspective, you know, there are varying estimates about how much the United States spent to develop and procure the vaccines we have. But they range somewhere in the range of, you know, $20 to $40 billion. In the opioid epidemic, it was a huge deal when in 2016, under the 21st Century Cures Act, we procured a billion dollars for the first time for the opioid epidemic.

You know, President Biden outlined during his campaign a plan to spend $125 billion over 10 years on the opioid epidemic. In the shadow of a pandemic that has occupied our attention and claimed more than half a million lives, we can't lose sight of these other epidemics of loss, of overdose crises. That's just a campaign promise at this point. And that's one source of frustration, I think, for people I spoke to in West Virginia, is that there was this incredible mobilization

of the funding and the power of the federal government on the subject of vaccine acquisition during the coronavirus pandemic. And they've never seen anything like that with the opioid epidemic, even though this is something that for many people is much more immediate and has been much more damaging to their community. To those still struggling, I want you to know that I see you. And we're going to beat this thing together. If there were some kind of moonshot idea, what would it be? What you often hear from advocates in these communities who are trying to implement these measures is just that they need a more cohesive federal response. They need better standards of care outlined by the federal government and more funding. I mean, essentially, they need a mobilization on the scale of what

we've seen with the coronavirus vaccine development for the opioid epidemic. Peter Jameson is a reporter at The Washington Post. Our episode today was produced by Miles Bryan. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained. Thank you.