Increasingly common heroin addiction overwhelms agencies
Health News

Increasingly common heroin addiction overwhelms agencies


Jails, treatment facilities, drug courts and hospitals are struggling to provide the necessary help as more Kentuckians become addicted to heroin, Chris Kenning writes for The Courier-Journal: "In a state that already had a shortage of drug-treatment options, the heroin problem is badly outstripping Kentucky's ability treat it." A Kentucky Health Issues Poll found that 9 percent of Kentuckians and 15 percent aged 18 to 29 reported awareness of a family member of friend struggling with heroin.

"We're just bursting at the seams," said Karyn Hascal, who is head of The Healing Place, a Louisville drug-treatment center. "I've been around 35 years, and I've never seen anything hit this fast and this hard." Though heroin users were few and far between several years ago, now they take up 90 percent of The Healing Place's detox beds.

The Louisville jail deals with 30 to 90 inmates every day. It has hired four around-the-clock detox nurses, started new detox dorm programs and added training officers since 2012, and "increased our inmate health-care budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars," said Metro Corrections director Mark Bolton.

Heroin may be "the most addicting drug there is," said Dr. Christopher Stewart, an addiction psychiatrist and medical director at the Jefferson Alcohol and Drug Abuse Center. Heroin crosses the blood-brain barrier and becomes morphine, "binding to opioid receptors in the brain and sparking an intense rush of pleasure and euphoria?one that's far more sharp and immediate than opiate pills," Kenning writes. People become immune to its effects and need to take more of it, and withdrawal symptoms include pain, vomiting, insomnia, spasms and cravings.

While longer-term treatment for severe addictions often includes patient resident programs including counseling, Kentucky lacks this kind of care. "There are not enough open-entry detox and treatment beds in this community?I'm talking non-insurance beds," Bolton said. Dr. Eric Fulcher, an emergency room doctor said that providing emergency treatment for heroin addicts has become "the new normal" at Sts. Mary and Elizabeth in the South End. "We're so used to it, we're almost numb to it."

Although the former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske, recommended the increased availability of naloxone, used to counteract heroin overdoses, the General Assembly didn't pass a bill "that in part would have made naloxone more widely available, along with other heroin-related measures," Kenning writes.

Jefferson District Judge Stephanie Pearce Burke said that "heroin use is present in more than three-quarters of her cases." Something has to be done. "People still have the idea that it's a drug from the '60s and homeless people in the park," she said. "But the face of heroin has changed. It's suburban teens and middle-class housewives, too." (Read more)




- Drug Overdose Deaths Rose 7.6 Percent In Kentucky Last Year
Kentucky had a 7.6 percent increase in overdose deaths in 2014, while the number of deaths attributed to heroin stayed the same, according to the state's 2014 Overdose Fatality Report. The report, issued by the Office of Drug Control Policy, said...

- Free Overdose-reversal Kits Are Given To Kentucky Hospitals With The Highest Recent Rates Of Heroin-overdose Deaths
Kentucky hospitals with the highest rates of heroin overdose deaths are receiving funding for heroin/opiate overdose reversal kits, which will be provided free of charge to every treated and discharged overdose victim at the pilot project hospitals, according...

- Congress Is Taking On Opoid Abuse And The Nationwide Increase In Drug Overdoses
Federal officials have become increasingly concerned about the rapid increase in drug overdoses across the country. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a series of hearings on the topic, is looking at how states are dealing with this problem....

- Cheaper Heroin Showing Up In Eastern Kentucky As Crackdown On Pain Pills Makes That Trade Less Attractive
About 60 grams of heroin, worth about $8,000. (AP photo)It was only few months ago that Northern Kentucky law enforcement officers and substance abuse clinics began expressing grave concern that heroin was fast becoming the go-to drug in their region....

- Northern Kentucky Group Forms In Response To What Some Consider 'epidemic' Of Heroin Use In Their Area
Ashel Kruetzkamp with a vial of Naloxone HCl, used to treat those who overdose on heroin. (Photo by Patrick Reddy)Heroin use is reaching such high levels in Northern Kentucky that experts are calling it "a plague." The problem is so dire that local agencies...



Health News








.