The Opioid Crisis in America is a Symptom of an Underlying Issue

If you read my posts often, you might have seen that an acquaintance of mine from high school overdosed a few weeks ago from opioids. Sadly in the United States today this is becoming a more and more common occurrence. Opioid deaths alone in the US have gone up more than 4x since the turn of the century. At this point many are calling this crisis a flatout epidemic, felt at every age level, but most commonly with younger people. The problem at face value might look like its addiction and drugs, but in my opinion that covers a much deeper problem, over prescription and behavioral nihilism.

The first part of over prescription is quite obvious, doctors are prescribing too many medications and the wrong kind of medications for various problems. My father works in pharmaceutical advertising and has many friends who are doctors and healthcare professionals, who always tell him about the lack of ethical prescribing in the industry. Rather than evaluating patients on a case to case basis and establishing some sort of pain tolerance scale that can be used to properly prescribe medications, bad doctors just go with a one size fits all methodology.

At some point this becomes flat out negligence and malpractice, but with the amount of lobbying efforts and protection the government gives the drug companies, going after the doctors is very hard. A large percentage of people who end up addicted to opioids and other painkillers became hooked after a routine surgery or injury where they were prescribed the drugs. Using alternatives is becoming more commonplace now, but many argue it should have been done long ago. Giving strong opioids to, in many case, young irresponsible people is just asking for codependency.

The second issue we have to tackle is why do we take drugs? Yes some people are more prone to become addicted than others, but many people who end up addicted to drugs are trying to fill a void within themselves that life isn't filling. There is a famous study where there were two cages, both with a regular water feeder and one laced with opioids. In one cage however were placed two rats, a male and a female, in the second cage only one rat. Ultimately the rats in the left cage chose the regular water versus the water with opioids and in the second cage, the rat drank the opioid water until it killed him. There is a sense of loneliness and nihilism in our culture, which is not, or might not even be able to be addressed.

Many young people especially, feel as if they dont matter as a whole, or that life is meaningless. In many ways we have become connected more than ever but it also allows us to drift further apart. Rather than having real conversations in person, we create this pretend life on social media that everyone thinks is the truth. Those who dont partake in this lifestyle are often pushed out and feel isolated from society. If you feel like shit all day long and alone, your chances of becoming addicted to drugs after introduced to them, is much greater. I dont know how we can solve this issue as a society, but it does tie in together with the abuse of drugs. People in the end want fulfilling happy lives and it seems less and less people feel like they are achieving that goal.

-Calaber24p