You have more than likely encountered first-hand experience of the opioid crisis in the United States. Whether through your own experience or that of a loved one. Make no mistake this in this being a crisis, recent statistics have found that nearly 100 people are dying every day across the USA from opioid overdoses, that’s more than both car crashes and shootings combined.
Have you considered that this phenomenon is not new? behaviour like history often repeats itself and similarly often to widespread detrimental effects for the individual, their loved ones and society as a whole. We will examine this fatal link today by explaining just how once before the United States of America found itself in the grips of an opioid crisis. by examining the past and societal changes that have led to this path.
Our hope from this is that you will discover enlightenment through education, and with that the power to guide yourself or a loved one to help and away from the destructive fatal path of opioid abuse and onto achieving a substance free and full life.
Where did it all start?
Contrary to popular belief the United States has had an unhealthy and somewhat abusive relationship with opiates for quite some time. Arguably the first major epidemic of opioids began during the civil war, where thousands of soldiers were either wounded during combat or became sick in bacteria laden camps. During this period opium and morphine were both widely used in field hospitals during medical procedures such as amputation due to their effective fast pain relief attributes. This gave rise to a wave of veterans returning home with serious addictions, widows and those who lost loved ones were also more inclined to turn to opioid substances.
“No tongue or pen will ever describe…the depths of horror in which my life was plunged at this time; the days of humiliation and anguish, nights of terror and agony, through which I dragged my wretched being,”
(Opium Eating: An Autobiographical Sketch by An Habituate (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1876), 67.)
The defeat of the south has also been noted for causing a spike in opiate abuse due to the effect on the economy of the southern states. The abolition of slavery caused a collapse of the cotton trade which led to many wealthy white Americans to suddenly becoming impoverished and turning to opioids to cope.
Although not strictly confined to the southern states of the USA, opioid abuse and addictions were most prominent there, were the need to use escape via opium or morphine was strongest in order to cope with lingering illness, injury, grief, or economic loss from the war.
How many of us can claim reaching out to dangerous substances as coping mechanism?
It is important to highlight that this was during a historical period, known as the gilded age, where there was no illegality to numerous dangerous drugs such as opioid substances, as such doctors and pharmacists were free to prescribe and administer drugs such as cocaine, morphine, opium and alcohol for a range of common ailments. Opium in particular was used for basic ailments such as sleeping problems and pain management, for instance male doctors of the 18th century prescribed opiate-laden medicine for women who were suffering from menstrual cramps. As a result of this laissez faire approach a generation of Americans soon became addicted to opioids. A bottle of laudanum, a highly addictive liquid preparation of opium widely used as a painkiller and sleep aid in the late 19th century.
This did not change until there was an internal movement within the health profession in the USA, with professionals critiquing the patented system and their colleagues which led to a widespread change of attitudes and law, the subsequent Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 was the first modern step to our modern understanding and regulated control of narcotics.
In part two we will examine how recent history has once again forced the USA in do a state of dependency crisis.