Prescription drugs: Understanding the ‘epidemic’

Although theres no data to pinpoint when exactly the prescription drug addiction boomed in town, Liz Jorgensen, a Ridgefield drug counselor, sent 30 to 40 people to rehab for prescription drug addiction from September 2009 to September 2010.

The prescription opiate crisis in the United States kills more than 40 people per day.

Although that figure which many estimate is now more than 50 seems distant from a town like Ridgefield, the reality of this devastating situation is that nobody can afford to ignore it anymore. Seventeen overdose incidents occurred in 2012 in Ridgefield.

The number of overdose deaths from prescription opiates has tripled over the past decade; they now kill more than heroin and cocaine combined, said Marita Bonanni, who has worked in Danbury Hospitals Emergency Department since 2000.

Its an epidemic that is everywhere, not just in cities or urban areas.

While prescription drugs have proven they are more deadly than street-level ones, the prescription opiates are merely the first step in an insidiously destructive cycle of drug use and abuse that continues to cripple the nation.

Prescription drugs is the beginning of the cycle we tend to see that leads to heroin use, said Detective Brian Durling of the Ridgefield Police Department. It starts with them for whatever reason a sports-related injury, a medical procedure or a freak accident and then they start using them and then abusing them.

Experts in the field suggest the resurgence of heroin in the country is directly correlated with prescription drug-based addiction that leads opiate addicts to seek a similar high at a cheaper price once their prescription source runs out.

The supply is very limited, said Detective Durling. You get them from a doctor and you get X number of pills. When that runs out, youre hitting the streets where they range from $20 to $40 a pill, and they are hard to find. Heroin, on the other hand, is easy to find, its not regulated in the same way and its cheaper.

The addiction

View original post here:
Prescription drugs: Understanding the ‘epidemic’