Three Generations of Opioid Addiction - Pacific Standard
▻https://psmag.com/social-justice/three-generations-of-opioid-addiction
Le lien entre l’héroine/fentanyl de la rue et les médicaments anti-douleur au travers de l’histoire d’une famille dans une ville en perdition.
“If I flip back into my junkie brain, ’Oh man, someone just died from pink bags, that’s got to be great shit!’” he says, speculating that this latest overdose came from heroin laced with the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. Different batches of heroin are often sold in distinctively colored or marked bags, and when addicts know a certain batch is powerful, they seek it out.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently declared drug overdoses to be the leading cause of death for people under 50. And places like Jamestown—small towns across the American heartland and the Rust Belt—are those hardest hit.
Chanda Lynn says she was prescribed Vicodin for back pain while she was pregnant with her son. She thought the prescription was irresponsible but, already struggling with addiction, she found herself unable to stop using painkillers. “Every day I’d lay in bed and I’d pray over my stomach, please protect him from withdrawal, please protect him from addiction,” she says.
The county is also trying to prevent opioid addiction early, with educational programs about opioids starting in kindergarten in local schools. And the county provides safe disposal sites and free lockboxes for prescription medicine, to try to keep it from filtering onto the streets.
While Chanda Lynn is glad to see health-care institutions and public agencies taking action, she believes the real change must come from someplace much deeper: the way our society looks at users. Addicts are often doomed to relapse when they return to a society where they face stigma and lack of opportunity, she says.
“When you come back, the communities aren’t willing or ready to accept you. There are no jobs and you have felonies so you can’t get a house or a car,” she says. “So you go back to the addict community that accepts you.”