“I held my love for my father close, afraid of letting it show, as I waited for the call to tell me he had died.”

[Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera]

by Brianna Bell

“My mother packed her bags and left my father when she was seven months pregnant with me, her belly swollen under her loose-fitting maternity dress. She planned to stay with her parents until my father ‘got his act together.’ But he never did, and she never returned.

“She raised me on her own, with the help of her parents. My childhood was quiet and simple. I read books in my spare time and went to camp every summer. For vacation we would take the train for free to Montreal, or New Brunswick, enjoying our frugal travels thanks to my mum’s employment with a railway company.

“Most weekends she was at work, so I spent Saturday and Sunday with my Maltese grandparents. My Nanna would cook stuffat-tal fenek (rabbit stew), and tell me it was Maltese chicken. I would watch hockey for hours with my Nannu, while we cracked peanuts into a bowl, shovelling handfuls of them into our mouths.

The first goodbye

“When my grandparents were not able to watch me, my mum would reluctantly drive me across town to visit my father. Our visits were rare and stilted, our relationship like a broken car that fails to ignite.

“I do not recall an affectionate hug or a tender word between us. I do remember empty beer cans piled high in a rubbish bin, the smell of cigarette smoke that coated the back of my throat, and the weight of my dad’s dog curled up in my lap.

“I felt lonely at my father’s house.”

Read this story in its entirety at Al Jazeera – click here.

“In Chapter 14, author David Nutt describes the opioid crisis currently besetting the US.”

“The current US prescription-opioid crisis is one of the most remarkable examples of medicine going wrong. Last year in the USA more people died from an opioid overdose than died from road traffic accidents, and more than the total casualties in the whole of the Vietnam war. The reasons for this are complex. They reflect a perfect storm of good intentions coupled with prescriber ignorance and commercial greed, occurring in a context of growing economic problems in some parts of the country, lack of social support systems, and individual despair, sometimes manifested by pain syndromes, in people who may well have been depressed. A vicious cycle of overprescribing of strong analgesics such as hydrocodone and oxycodone then developed that began the current opioid problem which has now morphed into the massive use of illicit opioids.”

Click here to continue reading this this article at The Scientist.

“Deaths classified as drug-related for 15- to 64-year-olds hit 9% in 2016, up from about 4% about two decades prior, but new research suggests the true number is actually more than double that.”

“Activists and family members of loved ones who died in the opioid/heroin epidemic take part in a ‘Fed Up!’ rally at Capitol Hill on September 18, 2016 in Washington, DC.”(Credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

posted by Michele Berger-Penn

“‘It’s obvious that the drug epidemic is a major American disaster,’ says Samuel Preston, a professor of sociology and member of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania. ‘The basic records being kept are annual reports on the number of deaths from drug overdose. But that’s only part of the picture.’

“Among this group of Americans in 2016, 63,000 deaths attributed to drug-related causes—mostly poisonings—but Preston and coauthor Dana Glei from Georgetown University estimate that the overall number of drug-associated deaths is far higher: around 142,000.

Read more at this Futurity article.

In 2017, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported that the state with the third highest overdose rate was Pennsylvania (44.3 per 100,000).

“The opioid overdose epidemic is the worst public health crisis in Pennsylvania, and the nation, in almost a generation. The Wolf Administration takes an all-hands-on deck approach to preventing addiction, saving lives and getting Pennsylvanians into treatment. This dashboard provides data behind Pennsylvania’s response to the crisis collected through the Governor’s Opioid Disaster Declaration.”

“Estimated Number of Drug Overdose Deaths in Pennsylvania in 2017 | Preliminary data is showing a decline in drug overdose deaths, but there is more work to do. Pennsylvania continues to focus on saving lives, expanding treatment access and getting patients into treatment.”

In 2017, the drug overdose deaths (by county) are:

• Berks – 85
• Lancaster – 108
• Lebanon – 25