Even when not in the throes of a pandemic, the United States has an addiction problem. Deciding to seek help for an issue that is scorned by many can be difficult, as can finding help within our health care system.
Now, experts say, those problems are being exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
“People are struggling with the lack of connection,” Lyn Anderson of Recovery Cafe Clark County recently told The Columbian. “The frustration and the inability to pay your rent, now you don’t have a job, your meetings and support groups, now all of that is gone. It’s getting better for people, but this is something they shut the doors on really quickly.”
That is having an impact across the nation. In August, the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program, based in Washington, D.C., reported a significant spike in the number of fatal overdoses. “Overdose clusters have shifted from traditional centralized urban locations to adjacent and surrounding suburban and rural areas,” program manager Aliese Alter said.
The organization compared reported overdoses, fatal and nonfatal, in the weeks leading up to coronavirus quarantine measures and in the weeks after. More than 60 percent of counties participating in the project reported increases. Alter told NPR, “We did find the number of spike alerts and also the duration of those spikes had increased nationally since the commencement of state-mandated stay-at-home orders.”
Meanwhile, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that roughly 13 percent of Americans had started or increased substance use — including legal or illegal drugs, alcohol and prescription drugs — to “cope with stress or emotions related to COVID-19.”
That likely was predictable. Not only has the pandemic created uncertainty, but its unprecedented nature has left us ill-prepared to deal with it. People in recovery often have seen support mechanisms diminished; millions have temporarily or permanently lost jobs; concerns for individual economic and health conditions have mounted.
Add to that the fact that a high percentage of displaced workers also have lost health insurance, and a perfect storm for substance abuse has been created. “There’s absolutely no doubt that the distress caused by COVID-19 is shifting people more into having addiction disorders, is worsening those that have it and is blocking people from being able to maintain recovery,” Dr. Paul Earley, president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, told Fox News. “Addiction treatment requires human interaction and hope.”
All of that compounds an ongoing crisis, even as the pandemic largely pushes that crisis into the background. According to the state Department of Health, about 700 people die in Washington each year from an opioid overdose. Nationally, according to the CDC, of 70,980 drug overdose deaths in 2019, more than 50,000 were caused by opioids.
Clark County Public Health provides information for preventing and responding to overdoses on its website. And the National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter for Southwest Washington offers information about mental illness, recovery and support groups. As the pandemic has reminded us, substance abuse and mental health are inexorably linked.
Most important is the need to engage with others and to reach out when you think you might need help. While COVID-19 is at the top of public health concerns, other issues continue to bubble below the surface.
