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Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#31

Post by mnm1 »

People are desperate. This is to be expected. Along with unemployment, loneliness, hopelessness, helplessness, stress, fear, and anxiety have all risen greatly. This is how people cope when they are not in control of their lives and especially when they don't see a path to regain that control. I would expect more of this. Drug overdoses were already a huge issue because of societal issues. Now, they will be even more so. In a society with no community and poor job prospects, prospects for the future look bleak. Can't really blame people for wanting something to console them in such bleak times. For many, it went from bleak to dire and horrific. The handling of the pandemic is just the latest way that society has failed so many.

Being the richest country on earth and also the one with the worst virus situation can also lead to cognitive dissonance for many people. Envy of other places that are handling the situation better is another thing that can lead people to despair. As is having no leader or leadership, no direction, no goal, no plan, and no idea of what the future will bring.

It's a nationwide disaster that people are simply not ready to deal with. Many people here have no idea what suffering is and therefore, they don't know how to suffer or how to get through such times. Suffering is externalized onto minorities and other unwanted people in society so that the well off don't have to deal with it. Now everyone's suffering and many simply can't cope with the suffering or with the additional suffering. Many resort to childish behaviors like refusing to wear masks or social distance to make themselves feel better by hurting others. A lot of people simply never grew up and now that suffering is inevitable, feel like they should be getting an exemption.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#32

Post by rohitb91 »

yingw787 wrote: post #8

I remember talking to a technically minded friend about my clinical depression, and I remember how she mentioned building an app to help solve it. I remember thinking at the time how sometimes building an app isn't the solution to a problem. Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest, most straightforward, and the least innovative ones: voting in policymakers who craft empathetic public policy, donating to charity…

That's a hilarious sort of tech delusion that people make fun of

Surely a react app is the only thing in the way between global peace and happiness and harmony, let's just make a nice webpage and raise hundreds of millions of dollars for it :)

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#33

Post by rohitb91 »

ethanbond wrote: post #20
pstrateman wrote: post #9

The same is happening in Canada, it's because addicts are able to get money from the government and they buy far more drugs than they're used to having. Edit: all the people downvoting me, why? not a single comment seriously, this isn't a theory, it's just the facts https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-pandemic-opioid-addict...

Potentially a factor, but don’t you also think widespread unemployment and general trauma - collective and individual - could play a role?

Were the drug addicts the ones that were employed beforehand?

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#34

Post by wavepruner »

yingw787 wrote: post #8

I remember talking to a technically minded friend about my clinical depression, and I remember how she mentioned building an app to help solve it. I remember thinking at the time how sometimes building an app isn't the solution to a problem. Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest, most straightforward, and the least innovative ones: voting in policymakers who craft empathetic public policy, donating to charity…

"Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest, most straightforward, and the least innovative ones: voting in policymakers who craft empathetic public policy"

This gets extraordinarily complicated because many political groups refuse to empathize with anyone who doesn't have the same life experience as themselves.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#35

Post by chrisco255 »

nxc18 wrote: post #12
drtillberg wrote: post #3

I'm cynical enough at this point to wonder whether the states will add these terrible losses to the COVID-19-related statistics to advocate for stricter and longer lock-downs.

States have been chomping at the bit to end their lockdowns. The fact that cases are spiking again is precisely because states were too eager to end their lockdowns. China had a brutal lockdown early and thanks to that they are now largely back in business. Anti-lockdown sentiment early on is precisely the reason the US has had to prolong its suffering. The reason long lockdowns are happening is because we can’t must…

Deaths are still on the way down in Georgia, one of the earliest states to re-open: https://ga-covid19.ondemand.sas.com/

I would say, excessive lockdowns are not effective at fighting the virus. You win a short term victory at the cost of your long term future. You can kick the can down the road, but as soon as you re-open, if you haven't achieved herd immunity, the virus will spike again. That's going to happen to any country, anywhere.

As for China, we have no real idea of how much death or cases they have there. And from what I witnessed in Wuhan, where residents were bolted into their apartment complexes and barred from leaving, and whisked away from their homes at the first sign of a fever...I do not wish that on any free person. That is what happens when you live in a Communist prison state. I'll take liberty with all the risks that implies over Chinese tyranny any day.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#37

Post by eezurr »

lalos wrote: post #2

Well, right before the pandemic hit it was being reported that deaths of despair were up ticking so I doubt that trend has change with more pressure in the system. March 23: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/why-americans-...

First thing when you open the article:

>Suspected overdoses nationally jumped 18 percent in March, 29 percent in April and 42 percent in May, data from ambulance teams, hospitals and police shows.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#38

Post by Darmody »

I lived alone for 2 years but most of the day I was out, working and doing my stuff. Some weekends when I had nothing to do and no one to hang out with I kind of felt what loneliness is. Not that it was a big problem to me then as I can entertain myself with a good book, a game, some movies, etc, but several weeks of that would've been very different.

Loneliness can hit you hard, very hard. And on top of that if you have any addiction and mental health problems...

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#39

Post by dylan604 »

drtillberg wrote: post #3

I'm cynical enough at this point to wonder whether the states will add these terrible losses to the COVID-19-related statistics to advocate for stricter and longer lock-downs.

What are you on about? States are not reporting accurate numbers because they're wanting to re-open. I'm cynical in thinking that these numbers won't get reported as COVID related deaths for the simple reason the virus wasn't the cause of death even though they are results of the overall effect of the pandemic.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#40

Post by AnimalMuppet »

commandlinefan wrote: post #21
nxc18 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States have been chomping at the bit to end their lockdowns. The fact that cases are spiking again is precisely because states were too eager to end their lockdowns. China had a brutal lockdown early and thanks to that they are now largely back in business. Anti-lockdown sentiment early on is precisely the reason the US has had to prolong its suffering. The reason long lockdowns are happening is because we can’t must…

> had a brutal lockdown early and thanks to that they are now largely back in business Wait, that doesn't make sense - are you saying that they locked down long enough that everybody who had the virus "lost it" (either by getting healthy or dying)? That doesn't sound very plausible given what we know about epidemiology. The lockdown was sold here as a way to "flatten the curve": everybody who would have gotten it wil…

Entirely? No. Nobody (I think) is claiming that.

But if you lock down so that each infected person, on average, infects less than one new person, and you do it long enough, then yes, you can completely eliminate the virus that way. And yes, that is perfectly consistent with what we know about epidemiology.

The cure may literally be worse than the disease, but we could do that.

But there comes a point where the number of cases is small enough that you use testing and contact tracing to do the rest.

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