ROUNDUP: EXPERT MEDICAL MISINFORMATION FOR A WORSENING OPIOID CRISIS; SIGNS OF EXPERT SOBRIETY IN BALTIMORE; SHUT UP ABOUT PSILOCYBIN
In Rhode Island, a medical expert attributes reduced deaths to failed medical cure buprenorphine; focus on naloxone in Baltimore is a sign of less severe expert impairment; psychedelic fail
by Clark Miller
Published April 3, 2026
All in a typical day’s revelatory news accounts.
In Rhode Island – as everywhere, consistently, (and here, and here) in the U.S. and Canada – persistently increasing high-risk opioid use and overdose, congruently with other valid measures, are incontrovertibly reinforcing signs of expert gold standard treatment failure, those treatments potentially effective only to the extent that they prevent high-risk use.
An increase, reported by the Rhode Island Department of Health, sets a threshold of 55 non-fatal overdoses during a seven day period.
Here is a portion of the press release from RIDOH:
“The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH)is alerting the public to an increase in non-fatal drug overdoses between March 10, 2026, and March 16, 2026. During this time, there were 55 reports of people receiving care at emergency departments for suspected drug overdoses. In 2026, Rhode Island has had an average of 41 non-fatal overdoses a week. …
The 55 overdoses over the past week met the 55-overdose threshold for the state. Additionally, Region 1(Burrillville, Foster, Glocester, and Scituate) exceeded its threshold for suspected non-fatal drug overdoses for this same week, and for the prior week.”
This comes at a time when overdose fatalities have decreased by about 33% in a year-over-year comparison.
Huh! So, Rhode Island is no different than all states and locales in the U.S., consistently experiencing a worsening crisis as evidenced by persistently surging high-risk use and associated overdoses that are moderated solely by desperate, emergency, intensive naloxone campaigns as harm reduction agaisnt lethal gold standard treatment failure and create the necessary illusion of gains against an incontrovertibly worsening crisis.
But wait! No reason for concern, here’s how one of America’s medical experts explained the remarkable gains. From the Director of Addiction Medicine at Brown University –
… a real testament to a lot of public health work,” said Dr. Cecilia Fix, the director of Addiction Medicine at Brown University Health who oversees the Addiction Care Today clinic. …
“Our focus has really been making sure that people can get care immediately when they’re ready for it,” she said. “The people we see in our clinics are almost exclusively using fentanyl.” …
The bottom line is this:
“We can treat any addiction in the outpatient setting at our clinics,” said Fix.
Often with a highly effective drug known as buprenorphine.
“We know that there’s a 50% decrease in mortality—that’s five zero. That’s a huge mortality benefit, almost not seen in medicine. It’s almost nearly impossible to find a drug with that profound of an impact,” she said.
I did not fabricate any of that. That is verbatim what Dr. Fix conveyed as reported in the news piece.
Astute readers here or any reader with a level of interest that has led them to follow, research and think critically about evidence over past years related to the crisis may wonder about the revelatory, grossly negligent lack of context in that news report.
Context establishing:
That there has never been a valid, credible, non-confounded body of results to support substitute opioid therapy (buprenorphine and methadone) as providing benefit rather than harm for compulsive, problem use of opioids, addressed here and here in multiple posts over the past 6 years.
That compulsive, problem substance use is not remotely a medical condition, or disease of the brain, or disease of any type.
That decades of diversion of research and healthcare funding and of displacement of evidence-based approaches to compulsive substance use by medical model “treatments” promised to provide cures, have generated and perpetuated predictably worsening, lethal epidemics.
And that there does not exist a condition of “addiction“, that fiction necessary to divert those $billions of dollars in public health resources to the lethally failed medical approaches.
And in Baltimore,
Where a medical expert strategy of doubling and tripling down on lethally failed gold standard “treatments” gained that city the status of opioid fatal overdose capital, there may have been an awakening, a wakeup call and a partial clearing of impaired judgment, possibly facilitated finally by a recent series of mass overdose events in which those expert gold standard treatment approaches fueling persistent high-risk – indiscriminate high-risk use in a dangerously toxic supply economy – were prevented from generating mass fatalities only – solely – by the ready availabiility of naloxone at the incident sites.
So, far too many iatrogenic deaths too late, there appears to be a shift, to sobriety, to less impaired judgment, to saving lives the only way that has ever worked in the worsening crisis – by more and more intensive investment in naloxone training and distribution as harm reduction against expert treatment failure.
From this report, naloxone distribution is right at the top of the city’s brand new, sober harm reduction plan –
According to the city’s blueprint, the strategy is organized around five priorities and 13 specific strategies that include widening naloxone distribution, scaling up mobile treatment units, strengthening peer overdose programs, and investing in harm reduction services and 24/7 supports, per Baltimore City Health Department. The document also promises a public dashboard, regular community reporting, and a two-year review cycle to keep score on what is and is not working. The Mayor’s Office of Overdose Response, or BCMOOR, is set to coordinate the work with city agencies, community groups, and residents.
[emphasis added]
That’s consistent with this report, as well –
Under the final plan, the city will use the funds to expand the availability of naloxone (an overdose-reversing nasal spray), create more mobile treatment options, increase support for peer overdose programs and invest in harm reduction and 24/7 support efforts.
[emphasis added]
And as for Rhode Island, there is missing context.
Primarily, that naloxone’s days are numbered, and then, What now?
And the problem that naloxone is a lethal dead end in the New Opioid Crisis.
On to Psilocybin and the Big Bummer, Man
Shocker!
Psilocybin, THC, other psychedelics, after decades of research, have failed to gain a body of evidence to suggest benefit for mental health conditions, including compulsive substance use, despite the charms of beloved charlatans and assurances of America’s media/expert collusion.
Despite the best efforts applied to branding, deception and promotion – by the same class of renowned know-nothings who have helped launch and perpetuate a lethal, iatrogenic opioid crisis, writing confidently and convincingly about research they are not remotely able to evaluate or form critical thoughts about – despite those best efforts, there are no surprises here in the lack of support for altered mental states or brain chemistry as beneficial for depression, anxiety, or substance use.
Why not?
Partly because the assurances of research outcomes of positive benefit – as for opioids for pain, as for opioids for opioid dependence, as for antidepressants – sold to a needy, vulnerable public promised medical relief for emotional and psychological pain, trained to believe those are medical conditions with medical cures, were all generated as fabrications from “research” never scrutinized, always instead flawed and meaningless, all along. Some of the revelatory exposure of that is covered in this readable account.
More to the point and more fundamentally –
The medicalization of entirely non-medical conditions, including but not limited to almost all chronic pain, all compulsive substance use, including that of food leading to obesity, depression, anxiety, and PTSD, has predictably played out as an assault on human health and as a driver of public health epidemics. Each visit to a medically trained provider under the pretense of treatment for those conditions predicts increased risk of illness, harm, and death.
None of those conditions are about or benefit from disturbances or manipulation of brain chemistry by chemical agents. They are of the mind, the psyche, ego, and use of self to uncover, know and re-create thoughts and beliefs. No pill for that.
The very belief that there are medical cures for those non-medical conditions instills dependence and passivity, robbing those who are deceived of the potentially developed capacity for the personal insight, ego strength, motivation, empowerment, courage, assertiveness, and sense of self-efficacy that comprise necessary areas of growth in successful treatment of those conditions.
That mass deception is a crime against humankind, its victims left wandering in a fog through a world of disconnection, fear, and dysfunction.
