By David Palmer
The Presidential primary elections in New Hampshire are over and candidates have moved on to other state elections and caucuses. In the wake of intense media attention, they leave the revelation that the Granite state has a serious heroin problem. On NBC’s nightly news on February 3, under the headline “Our Families Are Dying: New Hampshire’s Heroin Crisis,” the problem was exposed. “Last year,” the report said, “there were roughly 400 drug overdose related deaths in New Hampshire—the most in the state’s history. With a population of roughly 1.4 million, the Granite state has one of the highest per-capital rates of addiction in the country.”
Heroin, like other opioid drugs—including prescription drugs such as hydrocodone, oxycontin and percocet–is derived from morphine, a powerful and potentially deadly drug. A decade ago, prescription drug abuse was becoming the big problem, and local communities began to organize to clamp down on the abuse of these drugs. Little Rock, under the direction of Arkansas Drug director Fran Flener, for example, succeeded in reducing consumption. Unfortunately, faced with the high cost of pills, addicts have turned to another opioid, heroin, which costs about $15 a package versus as much as $80 for a pill. Heroin, like the prescription meds, is synthesized from morphine. According to national statistics, about 4.2 million Americans have used heroin. The drug can be injected, inhaled or smoked. And it becomes a chronic relapsing disease caused by changes in the brain. Use of heroin contributes to depression and antisocial personality disorder. Physical consequences include: collapsed veins, bacterial infections of blood vessels, abscesses, infections, arthritis and other rheumatologic problems as well as itching.
Heroin overdoses frequently involve suppression of breathing which can result in coma, permanent brain damage and death. Effects on the brain include developing a tolerance and the need for increasing amounts. It can effect decision-making abilities, the ability to regulate behaviors and responses to stressful situations. Several years ago I interviewed a doctor at a major hospital in Little Rock about opiate addiction and its impact on the brain. One of his observations was that, “drug dependent people don’t think much about the future. Studies show that heroin addicts think ahead an average of 9 days while the time horizon for the general population is four and a half to seven years. “If you are only thinking a day ahead,” he said, “It allows you to make choices that completely ignore the consequences of some of your decisions.” Studies of the brain, Bickel says, also show that the cerebral cortex, which provides the capacity to plan and think abstractly among other things, “goes offline with addicts, and they go back to the more primitive part of the brain dealing mostly with emotions–the limbic.”The findings confirm, no doubt, what the average citizen believes about the behavior of drug users. It also suggests that getting the cortex back on line and toning down the limbic are worthy goals in substance abuse treatment.
There is another factor that the citizens of New Hampshire must recognize and that is its lack of faith in God. In the Wall Street Journal of February 6 under the headline, “The Secular State of New Hampshire.” It begins with the revelation that, “New data from Gallup show New Hampshire to have the fewest residents who describe themselves as “very religious.”As a long time participant in the biblically based 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and a devoted Christ follower, with over 35 years of sobriety, I am convinced that a commitment to these spiritual convictions is vital. Another part of the drug problem is the scarcity of addiction treatment. As the addiction problem has worsened in New Hampshire over the past decade, access to substance abuse treatment has not improved. “There’s a stigma out there for users, said Diane St. Onge director of the Manchester Comprehensive Health Center—one of eight clinics in the state that provides methadone treatment for heroin addiction. We need more treatment options. People’s lives are at stake.” The director’s statement of needs falls short of the mark. What New Hampshire really needs is more faith-based institutions, more 12 Step meetings and more psychiatric hospitals.
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