With Already Problematic Opioid Usage, Essex County Can Prepare for Impact.
Spring comes with the anticipation of sunshine and time outdoors…and inevitably an uptick in spring clean up injuries. Our area is lucky to have doctors using evidence-based prescribing habits around pain management. They even register on the state monitors as having improved prescribing habits when it comes to opioids. While this is hopeful, we continue to work on best practices for drugs used to treat an opioid addiction (medication assisted therapy or MAT). Meanwhile, Essex County continues to struggle with overdoses.
It is fairly common knowledge that opioids were developed initially for cancer pain, then marketed as a high quality, non-addictive “pain killer,” and used to treat an array of aches and pains. With time, we (doctors treating spine pain) found that patients who technically should have been getting better were getting worse with no known cause- regardless of engagement and compliance in care! What we were seeing was opioid-induced chronic pain- or as the healthcare biz likes to call it Opioid-Induced Hyperalgesia (OIH)- pain exaggerated by opioids. To contrast this from tolerance where the same dose of a medication loses its efficacy overtime and you must increase the dosage; OIH is when the opioid actually wakes up those receptors rather than shuts them off. They become MORE sensitive rather than less sensitive.
The struggle with opioids has largely shifted to fentanyl. Its presence in not even other opioids, but marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines, was present over the beginning of the year. Most overdoses were attributed to fentanyl in party drugs, and currently popping up in cannabis. With failure to prevent the root causes of addiction, inadequate access to addiction treatment, the push for harm reduction has been front and center.
Efforts have been made- GIANT efforts- to increase the accessibility of MAT in opioid treatment. With incoming Medicaid cuts, the affordability and access is anticipated to change. SAMSHA (the federal agency that oversees substance misuse, mental health services, and related funding) already underwent borderline catastrophic operational and financial dissolution. Multiple local agencies have worked to increase harm reduction tools- test strips, narcan, never use alone numbers. The work is in our hands.
April showers bring May flowers, but it also brings drug take back day on Saturday, April 26th at the Essex County Public Safety Building. Please think about going through your medication collection and disposing of any medications that you are no longer using- Tramadol (Ultram), Dilaudid, Hydrocodone, any Benzodiazepines. The Prevention Team always has free drug disposal bags if it’s between collection days. We also have a Narcan trainer and Narcan, Fentanyl and Xylazine test strips to have on hand and offer to neighbors and strangers alike. All of the seemingly little things are going to count in the community campaign for well being.