Drug Abuse 'Crisis' Tackled at Coalition Forum
 Dr. Jennifer Michaels, medical director of the Brien Center, speaks about the drug abuse epidemic in Berkshire County. |
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The face of a typical drug addict in Northern Berkshire County might not be what you think.
Dr. Jennifer Michaels, medical director of the Brien Center, was one of a panel of speakers who talked to the 100 or so people gathered for the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition monthly meeting on Friday titled "New Ways to Approach the Challenges of Opioid Addiction in Northern Berkshire."
Michaels spoke about a 21-year-old she had worked with, asking the audience for what words come to mind when they think of a heroin addict. People threw out words like "dirty" and "scraggly" and "homeless." Michaels, however, painted a different picture.
"He looks like one of my kids," she said. "He looks like one of us. He's just a guy, a kid with parents."
This particular addict, Michaels said, was an athlete in high school who was prescribed Vicodin for an injury. He shared some with friends, and as they all experimented, they became less tolerant of Vicodin and moved on to harder drugs, including heroin.
"This little group had that happen," she said, adding that moving to harder drugs is common among addicts. "With addiction, you draw a line in the sand, and you're always crossing that line."
And that's why it's so important for people to be educated at a young age about drugs, why it's so important for them to get help and why it's important for society to stop stigmatizing and stereotyping addicts.
"It's an equal opportunity disease," Michaels said. "It's not a 'them' disease, it's an 'us' disease."
Michaels said this young man's experience was typical of the current "epidemic," which she believes started in the 1990s when pain medication such as Vicodin and Oxycodone became prescribed for pain not considered severe.
"Everything shifted," said Michaels, who added 14 million prescriptions for opiates were written in 2005 in Berkshire County. "Somebody got a lot of opiates that year."
Michaels was joined by several other colleagues from the Brien Center, all of whom spoke about the need to educate on and "destigmatize" a crisis about which they did not mince words.
"Addictions have really emerged as one of the county's top public health crises," Paul Hickling, director of the Adult Outpatient Services Division at the Brien Center. "Addiction has probably impacted everyone in this room."
Yet even still, people are ashamed to talk about it and embarrassed to get help.
"There's a lot of stigma attached to it. There's a lot of shame and a lot of secrecy," he said. "This is not an easy conversation to have. People just do not want to talk about."
Also speaking Friday were North Adams Mayor Richard Alcombright and North Adams Police Chief Michael Cozzaglio, both of whom spoke briefly about the issue from the different perspective of public policy and law enforcement.
"We're making every effort to combat it in a proactive way," Cozzaglio said.
Alcombright spoke about his frustration with a lack of education about the dangers of drugs, with the absence of a DARE program and or similar programs targeting elementary school students.
"We're not doing a damn thing about our third-graders," he said. "We need to start educating our kids."
Brien Center CEO M. Christine Macbeth pleaded with the participants of Friday's forum to not walk away and forget this huge issue that needs to be addressed.
"The conversation can't stop here," she said. "The conversation needs to continue so the stigmas go away."
Tags: addiction, Brien Center, drug abuse, NBCC, Northern Berkshire Community Coalition,
