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The Administration of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA) recognizes the national recovery month of September. This national observation is held every year to educate Americans that substance use treatment and mental health services can enable people with substance use and mental disorders to live healthy and rewarding lives.
Candice Shelby, a professor at CU Denver, discusses what has happened to addiction throughout the COVID pandemic and why we need to change the way we approach the treatment of addiction.
Candice Shelby, PhD, associate professor of philosophy, wrote the book “Addiction: A Philosophical Perspective.”
How does your research on addiction look?
In 2005 I began researching biological, psychological, social and economic aspects of addiction. This led me to write my book Addiction: A Philosophical Perspective. In my book, I argue that addiction should not be understood as a disease, but as an emerging complex dynamic phenomenon that should be understood on many levels. It is not just about genetic or brain functions, but the result of numerous interactive and changing factors. We need to understand that there are many elements involved when individuals suffer from addiction.
I think people can get out of addiction through proper treatment. Addressing this issue is not easy, but it requires attention on many levels, with many different tools.
How has the pandemic worsened this year for addicts this year than in previous years?
There was a 30% jump in opioid-related overdose during the pandemic, in addition to 93,000 Americans. This number includes death from synthetic opioids. This is the biggest leap in American history. Deaths from psychostimulants such as methamphetamine also increased dramatically.
Over the last year, economic and health disparities have been exposed beyond what we had previously wanted to know. People also saw uncertainties about housing and food, which are the type of risks and stressors that can cause self-medication to escape. The last year can be seen as a great trauma, but also as a very different type of individual trauma, depending on the specific situations of each individual.
We also ran into the problem that there was no place where addicts could go during the pandemic. Most of the aid was limited to online services and harm reduction services were reduced. Although we saw that online group services had a high number of attendances, there is nothing like face-to-face help; and personal contact is exactly what was minimized.
What are the main issues with addiction treatment today?
Instead of providing people with addiction with adequate help, including medications to treat opioid disorder, people lost the insurance they could have paid for, and as a nation, we continue to criminalize opioids. drug-related behaviors. This is a problem, as it eliminates all opportunities that may exist to help addicts looking for a path to recovery. Fear of arrest and imprisonment create more fear and stress. If they are arrested, people are subjected to additional reasons for wanting to self-medicate. People who are taken to prison, even briefly, often lose their jobs, time to attend to their addiction problems, and often their support systems as they isolate themselves from their families. Even undergoing the process of defending himself in court and then attending all the necessary appointments involving parole, he undermines a person’s ability to receive adequate help for their addiction. As a society, we are really putting someone in a deeper hole by criminalizing them instead of giving them the help they need.
For a hundred years we have been conditioned on the Al-Anon-based approach to “hard love” being the right treatment philosophy for the families of people suffering from addiction. According to this advice, we need to be selfish and take care of ourselves and eliminate from our lives those who suffer from addiction. This no longer works. It never really worked. We will all suffer the ravages of our society from this epidemic of addiction until we realize that we are all there together.
How can we better address addiction recovery during COVID and beyond?
What recovery addicts need is to need health care, both physical and mental (because they have the same foundation), social support, and ways to find meaning.
We need to put in place a system in which access to mental care and trauma is widely accessible, as well as opioid therapies, which have proven to be highly effective. In addition, as mentioned above, addicts have not had access to their support groups due to the pandemic. Online services have not been enough. They need to be touched by other human beings and share stories. To bring about the myriad of changes that are needed to overcome this attrition, we will need federals, states, and volunteers to help fund these efforts.
I approve of a model of open entropic systems to help our addicted family and friends. Instead of shutting ourselves in to try to “reserve” our energy, which is impossible, it’s much more effective to get support from healthy sources, so we have more to help those who need it most. This is a kind of loose model, and it’s essential to change from “hard love” to this one, because with such huge numbers, we’re all affected.
You can find more information about Candice’s book here. He also recently appeared on the Montel Williams podcast to discuss the opioid problem within the pandemic. You can find the full interview here.
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