COVID 19 Enforced Lockdown have been hard on people. People suffering from depression and anxieties have been seriously affected, and most of them have turned towards finding relief in drugs which has even worsened the situation. Almost a hundred thousand Americans this year were reported to overdose with drugs.
On Wednesday, the CDC center of Drug control reported that 100,306 deaths occurred this year in 2021 because of the overdose of various drugs. In the previous year, the frequency of overdosed deaths was about twenty-eight point five percentage points which are approximately about 78,056 deaths recorded. This number is almost equivalent to multiple of two of the deaths that occur by automobile crashes.
The investigations have been carried out with the help of the different provisional data recorded through multiple sources, and it only resulted in an increase in death rates during the lockdown periods, especially from the middle of March and towards the end of the year 2020.
Now that the restrictions and lockdowns have been made lighter than before, a lot of people are struggling with staying sober and not doing drugs again. The drug addiction and the alcohol addiction that they turned towards in the COVID lockdown days are hard to resist and go against.
This is because most people have lost their jobs or gone through a ride of emotions with their family or friends or lost a bond with their loved ones. Especially a lot of people have lost their loved ones to COVID 19, which has made it hard for them to cope, so they turned towards other means to help with the emotional pain they were going through.
Dr. Paul Christo, who works at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, states that there are not just economic crises that nations are facing because of COVID but also emotional and health crises too.
Not just drugs but also the painkillers that the doctors provide to ease the pain of COVID 19 patients have caused people to become addicts. These prescriptions usually involve the strong and synthetic opioid known as fentanyl, and the other one is heroin. These two are either used singularly or sometimes used with a mix of other drugs. Fentanyl has been used in hospitals as a cancer pain-relieving agent as it has very strong pain-relieving effects to soothe the patients.
A large number of fentanyl pills were recently caught by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration that was being smuggled in the form of prescriptions. These smuggled drugs are highly dangerous, especially the ones made overseas, specifically in Mexico, as these contain other chemicals which could even take lives.
Anne Milgram, who is the administrator of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, mentioned to the reporters that so much of the fentanyl had been caught in 2021 that it could prove to be enough to be provided for every American citizen throughout the country. It was in such huge amounts.
Jon Zibbell, who works at the independent and nonprofit institute RTI as a scientist, mentioned that fentanyl is the cause behind most of the overdoses, so it needs to be banned. If the government bans fentanyl and a proper check is kept, then there will be fewer deaths reported by overdose.
Austin Bank, who is 23 years old and lived in Aurora, Illinois, used to work as a bartender at Chili’s. Because of Covid 19 enforced lockdowns, Austin lost his job and was made to sit home at all times. There were a lot of things to fix and bills to pay a with the addition of searching for a suitable job. All this led to his severe depression of his, so he decided to opt for medications to fight this depression.
Instead of going to a psychiatrist, he opted for self-medication through Ketamine. Ketamine which is widely known as the Special K in the drug world, is a strong drug that has been studied to lower down depression. This drug is although a good way to relieve depression yet it has its side effects.
His Friend helped him get Ketamine which was not singularly Ketamine only but was a mixture of fentanyl too. This deadly combination within high doses is more than enough to kill even a dozen of people, so there was no way he could have been saved from it. This is how he lost his life to a drug overdose.
Things do get better with time. Even though he was going through a rough time now, he would have been happier in the future soon too. He was planning on studying further and becoming a navy mechanic, but because of the wrong choice he made now, he can no longer fulfill his dreams.
People who leave a world like this leave behind their family members in much more pain than they were facing. His mother, too, with pain, mentioned and recalled her son’s memories of how he was empathetic and kind-hearted.
President Joe Biden plans to reduce drug overdose throughout the USA:
The Joe Biden administration has been looking for a way to decrease drug overdose cases and help people with their problems and issues. For this reason, they have announced a complete strategy that seems to be very impressive and apparently effective.
Congress has been called out to help with Joe Biden’s plan of reducing drug overdoses. They have been requested to prove eleven billion for the carrying out of drug overdose program.
There was a study done in which it was found that drug users would prefer safer methods than using a syringe. This test also consisted of people who were fentanyl addicts, and they were provided with fentanyl strips. Almost all of them were seen to switch towards using a fentanyl strip which is a safer option than the other options.
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