Jessica Nickel – President and CEO, Addiction Policy Forum

Opioids: Hidden Dangers, New Hope

Jessica Nickel on using a holistic approach for better outcomes when treating addiction~ "When we stop playing whack-a-mole, have everyone together, and look at this as a disease space, an illness that requires us to follow the science and make advancements, and treat our patients in a more holistic way, I think we'll have better outcomes. Jessica Nickel - President and CEO of Addiction Policy Forum Jessica Nickel: We lose a 174 people a day to drug overdoses. That's like a plane crash every day. Brian Wilson: Jessica Nickel is the President and CEO of Addiction Policy Forum. From the earliest years of her life she's been impacted by drug abuse and has made it her mission to advocate for the families of those who have had the same experience. Her refreshingly candid approach to public policy and the science of addiction has put her in the spotlight - a position she hopes to use to bring families together and carve a new pathway forward on how we view addiction. We Need Access to Information to Learn to Separate the Disease of Addiction from the Person Jessica Nickel: I remember my first show and tell in kindergarten class. I went to Mrs. Dean and I wanted to talk about why people shouldn't use heroin, because my parents struggled with the heroin use disorder. My early years meant homelessness, and foster care, and hunger, and lot of instability. Then my mom went to prison as a result of her heroin use disorder when I was four. I spent some time with my maternal grandparents. Then at eight, permanently went to live with my grandparents, as my parents' health issues worsened. Because as a disease like any other disease, it gets worse over time if we don't intervene with the right healthcare interventions and the right treatment, and medications, and support. My grandma was very progressive even before we had all of our fancy brain scans and the evidence of this as being a brain disorder. She always used to tell me, "Jessica Marie, you hate that disease, but love your mama." Brian Wilson: Yeah, and that's a hard thing to do when you're that young, isn't it? Jessica Nickel: It's a hard thing for all of us to separate. Addiction is a brain disease that impacts some really important parts of your brain including your limbic system, which is our survival hard wiring. You have changed behaviors, and changed priorities. For all of us to understand how people that are close to us can feel and seem so different from the person that we know to really take that into account for some changes in the brain that can be treated and reversed is a new way of thinking about this and all of us whether it's family members, or healthcare professionals, or folks in criminal justice, we all need to have access to that information to have more empathy for the things that are happening to our patients. Brian Wilson: So then you started Addiction Policy Forum. Why? Jessica Nickel on Why She Started the Addiction Policy Forum Jessica Nickel: I felt like I was frustrated. I was frustrated for over 20 years working in this field or being involved in different ways. It felt like we were at the same yard line, like we're literally sitting at yard two with an entire field in front of us that we are not advancing down. We have a tendency to focus on one drug over the others and that's not how you should be approaching this. We need to focus on substance use disorders, not methamphetamines or opioids, or alcohol, and marijuana. We need to look at this as an illness and make sure that the systems that we put in place can respond to any addiction and to all the substances, because they change our foundations on following the science and treating this like a health condition shouldn't. So, I was frustrated about that. Frustrated that we tend to play whack-a-mole with the type of response. So, this decade its prevention is super sexy and fancy. Then it's recovery, and then it's treatment. The reality is that we need to have all of the comp...