ARBOR VITAE -- A consortium of healthcare providers in the region stands ready to help those struggling with opioid use disorder that develops either from abuse of prescription opioids or from illegal street sales.
Dr. Michael Larson, clinical pain specialist at Marshfield Clinic, spoke on the opioid epidemic at last Thursday’s town hall meeting in Arbor Vitae.
The clinical psychologist says others can help in the recovery process by understanding that opioid abuse causes an intense craving on brain function. Picture, he says, a softball. That’s the size of thirst for a person deprived of water for five days. Then picture a basketball. That’s the craving of someone who’s gone without food for seven days. But the craving is much, much worse for someone dependent on opioids and not able to get relief, the Minocqua Center doctor says.
“A person who has had an opioid use disorder, a well developed opioid use disorder, and they go without that substance for a day -- up to 365 days they were measuring people -- the volume of their craving was about the size of a municipal baseball field.” So when we talk to people about moral failing or (say) you just have to suck it up and be tough, we’re missing the boat. We don’t understand what they are dealing with. It also explains why people do crime, do a lot of other bad things, put themselves in dangerous situations, don’t necessarily care for their kids as well as they would like. Maybe don’t have a job, can’t handle finances. Whatever else is going on in their lives, it’s pretty much meaningless when you have that type of craving going on in your brain.”
Drug addiction is a serious illness that affects people from all walks of life and most age groups, including teens.
While the turnout for last week's town meeting was small, it’s a start to better understanding of the crisis and the solutions, says the doctor.
“We have to get more awareness out there of people getting engaged in the problem. I think this is a good start because this group can spread out and hopefully educate other people about some of the things going on. That’s what we really need. We need to get more awareness and more urgency for people to treat this. We obviously have to work on people not getting exposed to the substances first. And really changing the culture of our community where substance abuse is not something that we want to go down that road. The prevention is really the key, but we need counselors, we need treatment providers and we need recovery-oriented people that are really willing to help those people in recovering get through it."
Finally, the doctor offers this advice to those affected by opioid use disorder:
“If you are an individual that is seeking treatment for an opioid use disorder, or for a substance use disorder, go to hopeconsortium.org. That’s the place that has all the contact information. If you are a friend or a family member and you need to learn more about this and understand the problem, go to hopeconsortium.org where there is all that information that’s available to help you understand what they are going through and to get treatment for them.”
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, there were 865 opioid-related overdose deaths in Wisconsin. Both illegal and prescription drug deaths are factors to this epidemic.
