We Can Do Better.
The most current statistics, which are always woefully behind, show that 374 people from Berkshire County have died from an opioid overdose between 2010 and 2021. Three hundred seventy-four of our friends, neighbors, co-workers, husbands, wives, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and grandchildren have died from an opioid overdose. People with names. Not junkies, not addicts. Human beings.
Reader, you know you know someone, too.
Everyone keeps asking, "when will this end?" How do we stop these senseless deaths? We stop them by admitting the drugs aren't really the problem. They are the primary symptom of a much larger problem. If we want to end overdoses and the opioid crisis, we are going to have to finally admit this is a systemic problem. This is a societal failure. We need to delve deeply into the social determinants of health. We as a people have caused this for ourselves.
Want people to use drugs less, stop or not even start to begin with? Want to make drug dealing less attractive? Pay people a living wage. Better yet, pay them a wage they can thrive on. Stop accepting that it's alright for a CEO to make 2,000 times what the receptionist makes. Make work worth it. Give people a purpose, a reason to get out of bed in the morning, a reason to be fully present in their lives. Lower the cost of higher education. No one should be sidled with life altering debt in order to learn the necessary skills to create a better future for themselves, their families, their communities, the economy, and their country. We live in the richest country in the history of civilization, let’s act like it.
Address rental and home ownership costs. Allow people to not worry if they're going to lose their shelter every single month. Make it easier for people to build the bonds and connections that make life worth living. Nothing builds strong communities as well as home ownership.
Want kids to be less likely to use drugs to begin with? Bring back the arts. Create programs for kids to have something to do, and better yet, to feel good about. Buy just five or six fewer stealth bombers and open a few more recreational centers. Create hope. Stop creating a society that people feel like they need to escape from.
Stop stigmatizing those with a disease. Treat addiction like the mental health problem it is. Add more treatment beds. Make it not only possible, but mandatory to offer treatment when it is sought. Not, tomorrow, not next week. NOW. The window for treatment stays open for only a brief time period and once it closes, the person with the substance use issue may quickly return and just as quickly die. Many, many people die waiting for a placement in treatment. Even within in the medical field, Stop stigmatizing addiction. Stop treating people with the shame-based attitudes of “you did this to yourself.” Every human is worthy of love and compassion, empathy and hope. People recover every single day and those who “are never going to get it” may just get it today, if given the right supports. Before, during, in-between, and after a stint in your facility. Stop treating these humans as if they should be grateful to receive the half-assed, thrown together, under-staffed, under-trained, “healthcare” they are receiving. I get it, you’re over-worked, underpaid, and under-staffed. That not their fault, that’s your boss’, CEO’s, Board of Directors’, and everyone’s insurance companies’ faults. Want to build the workforce to help people in healthcare and the patients they serve? Update the reimbursement rates to pay people what they’re worth and sic a watchdog the management to ensure it gets to the workers and not theirs and the pockets of the higher-ups.
Stop criminalizing addiction. We have never and will never arrest our way out of this problem. We need to lower demand. The supply is always going to be there. It will never go away, no matter what we do. The way we've been battling drugs for over 100 years has not worked. It's only been successful in creating a profitable police state and court and prison system.
End the War on Drugs. It failed. We need only look to the Prohibition Era of 1920-33. Have we as a nation completely forgotten the extremely deleterious effects of prohibiting and criminalizing the liquid drug alcohol? Do we not recall the days of people going blind and dying from bathtub gin? I have some news for all the anti-harm reduction folks of 2023. With the repeal of the 18th Amendment and the passage of the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933, the United States officially embraced harm-reduction. Speakeasies with unregulated booze were replaced with safe-consumption sites, also known as bars, the black market and bootleggers were no longer as empowered, and people who were going to drink regardless of the law, could finally know and trust what was in their supply because it was regulated by the government. Prohibition wasn’t repealed because it was a rousing success, made things better, and cured the societal ills caused by the liquid drug alcohol. It was repealed because it caused 13 years of misery, crime, economic impact, and death. The EXACT OPPOSITE of its intended purpose.
With the entire illicit drug supply tainted with fentanyl, xylazine, carfentanil, and soon nitizines, we need to take a serious look at providing a safe supply in regulated sites that are attached to treatment facilities. We don’t even have to create this system. We need only adopt the expertise of those in Portugal, Vancouver, and other places where this saves lives daily. NO ONE has EVER died of an overdose in one of these facilities. EVER. Harm reduction saves lives. Harm reduction IS recovery.
We have the lessons of not even a hundred years ago…
Want things to improve? Let’s look to our past. Spend every penny that was spent on the War on Drugs on prevention, education, and treatment.
Gary Pratt
Director
Rural Recovery
(413) 854-5828
gary@rural-recovery.org
