America’s Health-Care System Is Making the Opioid Crisis Worse
Outside a liquor store in a rough part of Trenton, New Jersey, a one-eyed woman with sores on her face walked by, seemingly in a hurry.
I asked if she used heroin, and when she said she did, I asked her whether she had ever considered treatment. She said doctors have dismissed her. They tell her she’s choosing her “lifestyle.” The woman—who, like others, wouldn’t give me her name because of the stigma associated with addiction—said that at one point she tried to get on Suboxone, a medication that reduces cravings for heroin. It didn’t work, she complained. She says she was on a 12-milligram dose, far lower than the maximum dose of 32 milligrams.
She turned to a few other drug users standing nearby and plotted where to get food. Meanwhile, the woman’s companion, a man with a green-dyed beard, told me about his own struggles with addiction. His voice tinged with bitterness, the man said that when he’s asked doctors for help quitting heroin, they have given him referrals to rehab programs that have turned out to have long waits or otherwise have rejected him.
One of the pair’s friends—a stringy-haired woman who told me she has a crack addiction—chimed in to say that in the past, she’s gotten high just to boost her chances of being admitted into a rehab.
Given addiction’s tendency to ravage a person’s life, it’s not clear how many of these are simply one-off misunderstandings between a busy doctor and a desperate patient.—including Mercer, which surrounds Trenton—the death toll continues to climb. Meanwhile, more than of people with drug addictions in New Jersey go untreated. From January 2017 to January 2018, overdose deaths in New Jersey rose by 21 percent, compared with just 7 percent nationally.
