Health Consequence of an Addiction Pandemic

It's bad and getting worse

http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/assets/0002/6869/cabell1200ap_huge.jpg?1361821254

It’s easy to think of addiction as merely a thing that causes social ills, or even a thing that results only in overdose and death. If it were, it would be even easier to sweep it under the rug of our medical system.

In reality, while all too many Americans die from overdose (107,672 in 2021), vast numbers suffer terrible health consequences of addiction. This article from UPI highlights the problem, focusing on methamphetamine related heart failure, and references Cabell County, WV, where I was born and raised. My home state is deep in the throes of the drug epidemic.

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/12/01/methamphetamine-heart-failure-study/6671669911605/

Among the many things I see in relation to drug abuse and addiction are chronic anxiety and psychosis related to marijuana and methamphetamine resulting in mental illness (but without access to much mental health care).

There’s hepatitis C from IV drug abuse and likely as a consequence of prostitution to pay for drugs. This results in liver failure.

Every week we see abscesses and infected veins from injecting fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine. Sometimes these infections lead to sepsis, or widespread infection resulting in low blood pressure, poor perfusion of blood to vital organs and too often, death.

Other times, injection leads to infection of the heart valves called endocarditis, causing the ultimate destruction of those valves and requiring valve replacement. Sometimes those valves are replaced, then the new valve is infected as the addiction goes on until the addicted simply dies; another replacement unlikely.

Heart attack and stroke follow the use of many such drugs as well, due to high blood pressures and heart strain (as mentioned in the link above).

This is a very, very superficial overview. But my point is that drug abuse and addiction have staggering and far reaching implications for the medical community. And the things we see now will be worse, far worse as the years go on and more and more people are addicted to substances that take over their lives.

They need our compassion and our help. Nobody sets out to be an addict. They make bad choices, yes, but frequently are just using drugs to escape from bad lives, bad memories, bad thinking, ongoing abuse or any number of things for which they just want anesthesia.

We barely have the resources to manage our sick and aged now. When even more of them suffer from the ravages of drug abuse, we may be too far gone as a healthcare system to even help.

It’s past time to work and pray for solutions.