15.5 Overdosed: Other complications and consequences of Drug Use

Renegade Psych

Thanks for listening. I recommend watching this entire series on my YouTube channel due to there being several charts and graphics that you won't be able to see on other platforms; just search 'Renegade Psych' on YouTube to find our page. Future episodes will be live video recordings, but we'll still produce our audio-only version as well, so view on YouTube, listen on other platforms, or don't do either, Life is full of choices!

I recorded this series solo on a topic I consider myself very well-versed in, the drug/opioid epidemic, which has taken the lives of millions of Americans and caused medical and psychologic complications for hundreds of millions more, and has caused heartbreak in so many others caring for those with substance use disorders, in the last 25 years. While the official overdose fatality figures hover above 100,000 annually as of 2022, there are significant numbers of fatal overdoses that get logged as other deaths. The 1st episode of the series emphasized the severity and under-representation of the magnitude of the drug epidemic problem, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th episodes traced the evolution from an increase in opiate marketing and prescribing, primarily initially Oxycontin, to a black-tar heroin epidemic once the US government introduced regulations restricting opiate prescribing domestically, and a massive increase in the number of people injecting drugs, carrying a host of other potential fatal and non-fatal complications, followed by the 4th installation discussing the 3rd wave of fentanyl contamination into the entirety of the US drug supply, causing an even bigger surge of overdose deaths and non-fatal complications related to illicit drug use. In this 5th installment, we discuss a litany of different non-fatal problems associated with illicit drug use to try to emphasize ALL of the complications, not just the deaths, related to ongoing substance use disorders. In the 6th and final installment of the series, I will review some of my proposed solutions to combatting our drug epidemic.

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