America is suffering thousands of additional overdose deaths due to the coronavirus lockdowns, if the data gathered by the Washington Post is correct. This is horrifying, but it shouldn’t be surprising.
School closures, business closures, church closures, and stay-at-home orders are all efforts to save lives by slowing the spread of the coronavirus. But there are trade-offs, including lost lives.
Suicides, heart failure, and alcohol abuse could all be increasing because of the lockdowns. It’s hard to say right now, but the Post has found a correlation in its data with drug overdose deaths. For instance, Cook County, Illinois, has seen overdose deaths increase between 50% and 100% from a year ago.
The Post points to some possible reasons why the same amount of drug use would, amid lockdowns and a pandemic, lead to more overdoses. The first is that disrupted supply lines lead to people taking more deadly synthetic drugs. A second reason is a bit darker: “Social distancing has also sequestered people, leaving them to take drugs alone and making it less likely that someone else will be there to call 911.” Put another way, people are still taking heroin; they’re just doing it alone.
But it’s likely that drug use and abuse have also increased during the lockdowns, and this is something our political leaders and commentators need to keep in mind when they downplay the significance of the lockdowns. Reopening society isn’t merely about our getting haircuts or “a pedicure.”
People are home alone more. The places where they could visit friends or meet neighbors have been closed. People don’t have jobs to provide them regularity and purpose, not to mention earned income. We don’t have live sports or local concerts or public events to divert us.
The places addicts in recovery might turn for support are closed: the churches, the treatment centers, the clinics.
The Post article sees some of this, but in places presents it through a very Post lens. That is, some passages ignore the role that community organizations, social institutions, and informal networks play in helping people through tough times and addiction. Instead, they zoom in on government funding:
Notice that in that passage, there’s only government and commerce (“states and businesses”) in the Post’s field of vision. There’s no civil society beyond that. That one could help people by allowing them to get back to the local basketball court, coffee shop, or even (brace yourself) church is not mentioned.
On the whole, the Post piece helpfully brings out how the root of addiction and drug abuse is a lack of belonging and connection.
“It’s when you feel alone, stigmatized and hopeless that you are most vulnerable and at risk,” Robert Ashford, an addiction specialist, told the Post. “So much of addiction has nothing to do with the substance itself. It has to do with pain or distress or needs that aren’t being met.”
The reporters tell one heart-crushing story about a bartender who had been clean for eight years, according to his mother. He lost his job when the bar was forced to shut down. In his lockdown-enforced idleness and depression, he turned to cocaine and died of an overdose.
“If he had still been working,” his mother said, “he would have been able to fight that urge, because he was busy. He loved that job. He loved people.”
Read the story. It’s very well reported, and while the authors go over the top to not sound like they agree with Trump on the costs of the lockdown, it’s impossible to walk away without the conclusion that the lockdowns, however many lives they are saving, are also killing thousands of others.
