According to
Interact for Health, four Ohioans and two Kentuckians died of an unintentional overdose each day in 2012. These overdoses were primarily opioid-related.
“We know that if we can get people into treatment, into detox—it works—and we can work with them then,” says Ann Barnum, Interact For Health senior program officer, Healthy Choices About Substance Abuse. “Forty to 60 percent of people who get into treatment get into long-term recovery.”
In order to get people into recovery, however, there needs to be more of an effort to implement programming that lessens the life threatening dangers that can occur.
Many heroin and opioid-related overdoses occur because an individual relapses or has been clean for an extended amount of time and suddenly starts using again, Barnum says.
“The tolerance people build up over time to the drug goes away very quickly,” Barnum says. “They’re people who are struggling with their recovery, and then they overdose, or maybe they were arrested—which people need to be held accountable for their behavior—but they’re clean when they get out and for the most part haven’t learned anything about the disease, so their tolerance has gone down.”
To address the issue of fatal overdoses, Interact for Health has partnered with four community agencies to fund grants that will provide programming to reduce the number of opioid-related deaths occurring throughout our region. Partner agencies include
The Center for Chemical Addictions Treatment,
Clermont County Mental Health and Recovery Board,
Talbert House and
Transitions, Inc.
“The good news is that when we do things, they work. Treatment works. Harm reduction works,” Barnum says. “So, for example, providing naloxone and reviving people to make sure they live and get into treatment works. Syringe exchange works to get people into treatment; and in Portsmouth, they’ve halved their Hepatitis C rate by doing syringe exchange, so those are things we can be doing in this area.”
Do Good:
• Lock up household prescriptions, and get rid of any you are no longer using. Most local police stations accept prescription dropoffs.
• Know that because of the grant, naloxone kits will be more readily available. If you know of anyone using, be proactive and get a kit so that you can save a life by reversing the effects of an overdose.
•
Contact Interact for Health to get involved in the development of ongoing community-based initiatives and plans to address the heroin epidemic.
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