Somewhere in Utah, there was a funeral today. And there will be a funeral tomorrow.
“Someone’s planning a funeral for the weekend,” said Jennifer Plumb, the director of Utah Naloxone, an advocacy group she co-founded that distributes free anti-overdose kits to addicts.
At least one Utahn fatally overdoses on opioids every day, she said on Tuesday afternoon during a panel discussion about opioids that was hosted at the University of Utah.
In 2017, 635 Utahns died of drug overdoses, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
It’s not a new conversation, but it’s one worth repeating — with each other, with family members and with doctors, said Utah Lt. Governor Spencer Cox, who moderated the panel.
The culture around accepting opioids from doctors needs to shift, said Plumb.
She said every patient should ask their doctor: “Do you really think I need this? These are pretty strong medicines.”
Consider alternative treatments and medications, she added.
“We have to start advocating for ourselves and for our family members,” she said.
For example, patients who get hip replacements often receive a 30-day supply of opiates — enough to take one to two every four to six hours, according to Plumb.
After 30 days of multiple pills a day, “day 31 will feel like the worst withdrawal any other opiate user will ever feel,” she said.
The Number One demographic for opioid overdose deaths isn’t who people assume it is, she said.
It’s women, age 45-50, according to Plumb.
People assume that if it comes from a doctor, it’s safe, according to Angela Stander Lo, the Utah Department of Health’s opioid overdose prevention coordinator.
But abusing prescription drugs is as dangerous as using heroin, she added.
“Getting people to understand that connection or see those dangers has been difficult,” Stander Lo said.
As a society, we’re less tolerant of pain, CEO of Odyssey House Adam Cohen said. Doctors ask patients about the level of pain they experience. But pain isn’t objectively measurable.
“And they more freely prescribe,” Cohen said. “And then, here we are.”
Where we are is the fifteenth-highest state in the nation for doctors writing opioid prescriptions, according to Stander Lo.
A lot of peoples’ addictions start with an injury, she said.
Doctors prescribe more pills than are needed, and those pills end up in cupboards, in the hands of family members and friends, or on the street, she said.
That’s where experts who are on the front lines of opioid abuse see the shift to heroin.
Without resources to help patients recover after the opioids run out, people turn to the streets.
In downtown Salt Lake City, the street value of 80 milligrams of Oxycontin is $80, Plumb said.
A balloon of heroin, she said, costs between $5 and $10.
“There are a lot of people who wouldn’t like to be addicted opioids,” Plumb said.
The heroin addicts Cohen sees and treats at the Odyssey House weren’t “getting high and having a good time,” he said.
“It’s so they don’t get sick,” he said. “It’s that desperate for them.”
Insurance companies need to cover the treatment and rehabilitation options that wean patients off of opiates, she said.
Or, as Cox put it: build the fence at the top of the cliff before there’s an ambulance at the bottom of it.
Follow @tiffany_mf