A young woman addicted to opioids

She is 23 years old. Teenager faced a malignant disease requiring surgery and chemotherapy. He had intense pain and had to use morphine. She was monitored by a group specializing in pain. This was just the beginning of a long and unhappy story. The cancer was cured. But another disease, insidiously, took place in E's life.

Opioids

Opioid addiction is a true epidemic in the US. The beginning is similar: the prescription of an analgesic, often for mildly aggressive diseases. The analgesic is often an opioid. If the person has any vulnerability, whether physical, psychological or genetic, it becomes fertile ground for the onset of dependence, which begins with lower potency medications and escalates to increasingly stronger medications. And medical prescriptions are becoming scarcer. Desperate, the person goes to get the drug 💉 on the street. And then the problems multiply; trafficking, violence, misdemeanors, prostitution, countless losses and separation from family and society - work, religion, community life, after all. Heroin was once the most prevalent illicit narcotic on the street. Millions of people have suffered from severe heroin withdrawal. Millions died from overdoses. Many others fell ill : AIDS, hepatitis, skin infections, endocarditis, physical, psychological, social, moral and spiritual misery.

Fentanyl

Reality has changed. If, on the one hand, public policies harm reduction with provision of syringes and needles and clean and safe places for the uro of substances associated with provision of social services and medical care, on the other hand the emergence of a more serious threat worsened the problem. Fentanyl, usually used exclusively under medical supervision, in anesthesia or chronically associated with cancer or at the end of life, began to be used by drug addicts increasingly frequently. And due to a demand that grows day after day, production by clandestine laboratories gained space - and the doses of the drug and its purity became unpredictable - and overdose deaths multiplied.

Technical lack of preparation

Health services - and emergency services - are not qualified to care for opioid addicts. They don't know how to treat overdoses or withdrawal syndromes. At least in Brazil, prejudice is still widespread, strongly influenced by a moral view of the problem, not recognized as a disease nor as a person in deep suffering. “Addicted”, “She only comes here to take morphine, she’s here every day”, “I refuse to be treated”... and so on. This prejudice begins with the doctor and affects the entire multidisciplinary team. The look in general is one of contempt: “he doesn’t want to improve”, “if he wanted to, he would stop”. The unfortunate person sometimes doesn't even know about their condition - they cling to their pain, real or imaginary, in the hope of getting relief: with a dose of the drug. And they keep knocking on the doors of emergency rooms, where they find ill-willed professionals (this goes for any substance: alcoholics are usually treated like garbage 💆‍♂️, especially if they are intoxicated) and are rarely referred to - when they are, they encounter barriers and logistical difficulties: poor access, lack of professionals, both in number and in training. Guidance on healthy habits, Twelve Step brotherhoods and clinical peculiarities of the facilities are infrequent. Social inequality is acute: black people, the poor, those living in favelas, LGBTQIA+ people are even more mistreated.

Third Step

E. does not know about his illness. He believes he has a problem with his back that causes the pain he truly feels. After Googling, I learned of a doctor who operates on chronic pain in some little-known place. The risk of falling into the hands of a charlatan and being subjected to risky and potentially harmful procedures is enormous. Including from a financial point of view. The doctor 🚑 who attended is a recovering addict. He explains at length about the disease, points out the therapeutic possibilities, the need to accept the problem, the existence of groups such as Narcotics Anonymous, in short. Prescribe Methadone. And it places it in the hands of the Higher Power, as the Third Step points out: the surrender of life and will to His care, knowing that the control you have over your own life is scarce. About the other's life is practically none. It's in God's hands. With all the sincerity in the world 🌎.