The struggles and triumphs of an addict

The New Jersey governor wants drug abuse to be treated like a public health crisis and not a condition that is shamed and stigmatized.  What do the HIV/AIDS crisis of the '80s and '90s and the current “opioid epidemic” have in common? According to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie—a lot.  “Think about what the response of America was in 1995. We had the National Institutes of Health and every private pharmaceutical company with the government’s support struggling to get treatments—not cures—to extend the lives of people who suffered from HIV and AIDS,” the governor said this past Wednesday during a press conference in Toms River. “I don’t get, feel, the same sense of urgency in this country about this problem.”  While Christie is not the first to compare the two public health crises, his message is a good reminder of how destructive it is to debase and shame another, based on harmful stereotypes.  “People considered AIDS, if you remember, at the beginning of the AIDS epid

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The CDC asked more than 60 fentanyl overdose survivors and witnesses to share details about their experience. Overdose deaths related to synthetic opioids have skyrocketed in recent years,  rising 72%  between 2014 and 2015—driven in large part by the widespread use of the drug, fentanyl. Now, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are hoping to understand more about fentanyl overdoses by interviewing people who have overdosed on the drug or who have been present during a fentanyl overdose.  The CDC  recently released a report  in which researchers interviewed 64 people from Massachusetts—95% had witnessed an overdose in the previous six months, and 42% had overdosed themselves.  Researchers asked about fentanyl in the drug supply. Respondents reported that they often did not know whether the heroin they were using contained fentanyl. Some people specifically went looking for fentanyl, while others said they tried to avoid it—however, the dru