U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

I lived in northern Europe for a couple of years and it seems to me northern/western Europe is also much less religious than US, without a opioid epidemic.

Among people younger than about 60 or so I've noticed the reverse being far more true. People don't broadcast how religious they are. People are much more likely to broadcast things like what you're saying which is fairly insulting. You're message basically boils down to "most people who believe they are religious are just in it for the virtue signaling and therefore are doing religion wrong" which is pretty insulting to anyone even remotely religions.

I personally don't think religion has a large effect on opioid use or suicide but if it does have one it's a positive one. Nobody ever got hooked on drugs or attempted suicide because their life was fulfilling and on a track to get better. People do drugs and kill themselves because they are in despair and feel like there is no way out of their situation. If anything religion would act as a positive outlet for those feelings.

To me this all boils down to what you’re saying, but I’d like to just add mention that i think the bigger disease in the US that enables situations like this is the acceptance of misinformation. As you pointed out, many many many of these cases are started by a medically issued prescription, and it kills multiple times more people than recent wars or terrorist related acts, yet anyone who drives action here is often labeled as “helping junkies that don’t deserve help”.

In the very near future when climate change has destroyed our way of life, and one of the few nations that was capable of doing something is finally and certifiably recognized as having sat by and done nothing, i hope the world takes note. These are the kinds of acts of neglect that make Nero famous, and while i don’t want their names remember, i do want the world to move on from the US being seen as the worlds police and freedom fighters. If Kama is real, the US should be concerned, and as someone that is a close neighbour, it terrifying to think how that will flow on to impact the rest of us.

But what causes far greater deaths than even opioids, is avoidable medical errors. It's quite difficult to stop a highly addictive class of drugs which is backed by big business (legal or illegal). But that many avoidable medical errors in 2018, despite the high barriers to become a doctor?

Maybe we shouldn't be treating this opioid problem so gravely after all. The more serious, more deadly, more costly problem of avoidable medical errors could be even the root cause of the addiction epidemic.

I spent the better part of my adult life as an addict, and yet not one doctor out of the many that I saw acknowledged or noticed. Furthermore, on the occasions I did muster enough courage to ask them if the drugs were causing harm (three different non-opioid drugs at different periods of my life), I was shrugged off, the doctors saying that my symptoms do not match up, or otherwise downplaying the situation. I needed hard evidence that what I was doing was actually harming me or I saw no incentive to quit. By the time one does enough chronic use to be at risk of death, I imagine the addiction and habit is far too strong to easily break. So I'm of the opinion that the root cause is with the medical profession's apparent limitations.

It's often very hard to get medical help in general until something is plain and obvious, highly common, or literally killing you, with the evidence needing to show up on examination or test. This is something that I could be vastly improved with AI doctors and open access to anonymized health data. But given how much of a fight the taxi cab driver union puts up (with self driving cars and even Uber), I won't hold my breath for the AMA to get behind the idea.