CONNECTICUT: INCREASING HIGH RISK OPIOID USE FUELS A WORSENING CRISIS WHILE NARCAN AND MEDIA/MEDICAL COLLUSION HIDE THE EVIDENCE
The opioid crisis enters a new, grave phase: lethal truth is leaking out. “Code matrix . . . crash team . . . distracting lies STAT!”
by Clark Miller
Published July 5, 2024
It’s right there in the headline this time, anomalously, a tear, a rent in the Matrix.
Forget “opioid use”, “may be”, and “as widespread”. The accurate headline for the reporting from CT INSIDER (below) along with consistently congruent evidence from other locales, generated by an adult mind, would have read:
“Overdose deaths down slightly in Connecticut thanks to increasing emergency Narcan saves desperately required as high-risk use continues to increase“
We know that’s true because it’s established as true by the relevant evidence, discussed in multiple posts over past years, here.
From a recent post –
Let’s make something clear at this point. Every prevention of a death by opioid overdose is a good thing, an important thing, ethically compelled. That is not in question.
The question we are addressing is entirely different than that. Again, it is about how we understand and react to the inescapable facts that:
– Narcan campaigns and reversals have increased over decades and years, more rapidly recently precisely due to and in response to persistently increasing prevalence of high-risk opioid use in the crisis.
– The evidence is clear that the magnitudes of increases in those saves over time, and differentially tied to circumstances, more than accounts for any moderations observed in opioid-related overdose deaths.
– There are no analyses or interpretations required to establish each successful emergency use of Narcan as causing, as accounting for 1 less opioid death per month or year.
– Considering especially the magnitude of downward ticks in opioid deaths, compared to those increasing reported saves, there are no reduced deaths left to attribute to gold standard treatments or other factors.
– Each Narcan save is also evidence of an instance of high-risk opioid use, reduction of high-risk opioid use the only means by which America’s gold standard “treatments” (or supports like housing or fentanyl test strips) can have beneficial effects.
That evidence and trends can only mean one thing, and it is not good news.
Back to our current post
Consistently from widespread reports, Narcan campaigns are significantly increasing distribution, use, and potentially lethal opioid ODs reversed to prevent lethality from high-risk opioid use. As a confounding factor, that means that opioid OD deaths is not a meaningful measure of the severity or course of the crisis. Other, valid measures like incidence of opioid injection-related infectious disease point to a persistently worsening epidemic, As does the valid measure of total overdoses, lethal and non-lethal, as in Connecticut –
Data shows clearly that overdose deaths are down in Connecticut, but Nancy Navarretta is hesitant to call it a trend.
Now the commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, Navarretta has been with the agency for 11 years. She said the opioid epidemic has come in waves, and there are still 1,300 opioid deaths a year in Connecticut.
“After two years, we’re cautiously optimistic that we could start calling this a trend,” she said. “Last year, from 2022 to 2023, there was an 8.3 percent decrease and from 2021 to 2022, there was an additional 4.7 percent decrease. That is something that we’re proud of.”
Navarretta and Luiza Barnat, DMHAS director of opioid services, said it’s difficult to pinpoint one reason why deaths from opioid overdoses are down in Connecticut, but the wide availability of a rescue drug called naloxone has played a big part. . . .
Connecticut’s goal, based on a report by Canadian researcher Michael Irvine, was to distribute 45,000 doses of naloxone. The state far exceeded that number. Last year, DMHAS distributed 60,000 naloxone kits, with pharmacies in the state handing out an additional 30,000. . . .
Overdose fatalities are down, yes, but Jenkins says “we’re hearing about just as many overdoses, if not more, as we ever had.” . . .
The saturation of naloxone, though it is saving lives, may itself be hiding the extent of opioid use. A recent report from the state Department of Health showed that, “in the month of April 2024, there were 195 calls to the Connecticut Poison Control Center” for opioid use, of which 185 were non-fatal and 10 were reported as fatalities.
But that only represents events where emergency medical personnel got involved. “We know there’s a lot happening that we’re not aware of,” Navarretta said of overdoses.
Barnat believes there are closer to 400 overdoses a month in Connecticut, but that many go unreported.
“A decline in the reporting could mean many things, not necessarily that people are not overdosing. They could just not be calling” 911, she said. “We are saturating the state with naloxone. It could mean that people who use drugs will just revive one another and never involve any provider.
Of course, it is not “difficult to pinpoint one reason why deaths from opioid overdoses are down in Connecticut”, the distribution of Narcan skyrocketing to 90,000 units last year and each successful use reducing the annual toll of opioid OD deaths by 1 death. From figures provided, the state had about 100 fewer opioid deaths in 2023 compared to 2022.
Do the math.
Meanwhile, all signs p0int to increasing opioid overdoses, representing high-risk opioid use and a worsening crisis.
In that respect, Connecticut is not anomalous at all, is like every other locale desperately instituting Narcan campaigns precisely because high-risk, potentially lethal use is persistently mounting due to the lethal failure of America’s expert, gold standard medical opioid treatments.
The dangerous anomaly is the acknowledgment, however weak, equivocal and ultimately deceptive, in a headline hinting at the obvious truth that Narcan saves are hiding, distracting from the lethal failure of medical and institutional opioid crisis responses. Dangerous for the esteemed institutions and experts perpetuating and worsening the lethal epidemic.
The same anomalous leaking of truth in recent reporting from Florida. From that recent post –
From this report –
Naloxone, a medication designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdose, has undoubtedly saved countless lives in recent years. Its wider availability in many communities has provided a critical safety net for individuals at risk of overdose. However, it’s crucial to recognize that the successful use of naloxone may inadvertently mask the true scope of the opioid crisis.
While death totals are often used as a key indicator of the crisis’s severity, these figures certainly underrepresent the actual number of opioid overdoses that occur, as many are reversed through naloxone administration.
That bears repeating.
However, it’s crucial to recognize that the successful use of naloxone may inadvertently mask the true scope of the opioid crisis.
While death totals are often used as a key indicator of the crisis’s severity, these figures certainly underrepresent the actual number of opioid overdoses that occur, as many are reversed through naloxone administration.
Huh! You just don’t see that noted, that obvious point expressed, not anywhere – that as naloxone saves increase with campaigns to save lives by making the lethal OD reversing drug more widely available, the reduced OD deaths hide the failure of “proven” medical treatments to reduce incidence of high-risk opioid use, instead represent a worsening crisis and failed medical expert approaches.
You just don’t see that noted anywhere . . . other than repeatedly in posts here over past years.
Back to our current post
Taken together it’s a beginning, of an unraveling of a matrix of carefully fabricated lies, an unraveling ultimately inevitable as the fictional rationalizations fall apart. As they are and have for COVID responses and origins, for depression as a medical condition treatable with medications, for “addiction“, for psychiatry.
An unraveling inevitable for any fragile matrix of desperate, impulsive lies generated by individual, institutional and cultural pathology, by normalized characterological American sociopathy.
