{"id":134682,"date":"2018-10-18T12:43:43","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T16:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/?p=134682"},"modified":"2021-02-25T16:38:15","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T21:38:15","slug":"changing-the-narrative-on-opioids","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/articles\/2018\/changing-the-narrative-on-opioids\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing the Narrative on Opioids"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
October 18, 2018<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\tTwitter<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\tFacebook<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\"\"A version of this article first appeared in BU Today<\/a>. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

To fight the opioid crisis plaguing America, we need to move beyond punishment and stigma to a deeper understanding, panelists said Friday evening at the <\/span>BU Center for the Humanities<\/span><\/a> (BUCH) Fall Forum: Humanities Approaches to the Opioid Crisis, cohosted by the <\/span>School of Public Health<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll make strides much more quickly if we recognize that the epidemic is about us, not some \u2018them\u2019 out there,\u201d moderator <\/span>Martha Bebinger<\/span><\/a> (GRS\u201916), WBUR healthcare reporter, said during the opening panel. \u201cMy nephew Austin went into rehab a few weeks ago. My sister-in-law picked him up on the streets of Houston. He had become homeless after becoming addicted to pills.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She then asked the crowd assembled in the Trustees Ballroom at One Silber Way to raise their hands if they had personally been touched by the opioid crisis: many of the more than 100 in the audience did so.<\/span><\/p>\n

The goal of the two-day forum was to bring together humanities scholars, medical professionals, municipal officers, and artists whose work centers on addiction to create bridges and identify common understandings and solutions.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the opioid crisis, \u201cwe tend to see people in traumatic moments that lead to their being objectified,\u201d <\/span>Susan Mizruchi<\/span>, BUCH director and William Arrowsmith Professor in the Humanities, said before the panel began. The word \u201caddict\u201d itself is stigmatizing. The humanities can help us see them as human beings first, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mizruchi and <\/span>Sandro Galea<\/span><\/a>, Robert A. Knox Professor and dean of SPH, summed up the scope of the crisis in a preforum op-ed on the Thrive Global <\/span>website<\/span><\/a>: \u201cWith 64,000 annual deaths, it has surpassed the peak losses of all other epidemics, including HIV\/AIDS. The financial toll is staggering: over $500 billion annually. Myriad solutions have been proposed, some implemented. And yet, the overall national response remains tepid,\u201d they wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEpidemics like this do not happen without the backdrop of a culture that was ripe for an epidemic to rage across the country,\u201d Galea said during Friday\u2019s panel. \u201cThere\u2019s an enormously high correlation [with] issues of low employment and poverty. It was dry tinder, and it was really only a matter of time before the wildfire took.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The opening panel, titled \u201cThe Public Face of the Crisis,\u201d touched on numerous issues, ranging from the crisis\u2019 proximate causes in pain management and pharmaceutical profiteering to deeper issues including the criminalization of addiction and fundamental societal inequalities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Along with Galea, speakers included <\/span>Samuel Kelton Roberts<\/span><\/a>, associate professor of history and associate professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University; <\/span>Elaine Scarry<\/span><\/a>, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value, Harvard University; and <\/span>Nora Volkow<\/span><\/a>, director of the <\/span>National Institute on Drug Abuse<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roberts challenged the race-based conventional wisdom about the current crisis. \u201cIn early 2017, there were two questions that were in the punditry\u2019s collective mind: One was \u2018How did this guy win? President Trump? How did that happen?\u2019 And the second question was \u2018How did we get all these white addicts?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cInterestingly, the answer to both of them was white pain,\u201d he said. Earlier drug epidemics\u2014heroin in the 1960s and \u201970s, crack cocaine in the 1980s\u2014were also \u201cdiseases of despair,\u201d driven by economic and other social problems that affected African American communities. \u201cBut of course, we didn\u2019t treat them as such,\u201d he said. Instead, \u201cwe had mandatory minimum sentencing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Volkow shared an anecdote that a doctor at a major hospital had told her to illuminate the devastating toll of the current crisis: \u201c\u2018For the first time, we do not have problems getting organ donors,\u2019 the doctor said, \u2018because so many people are dying from overdoses.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, that was chilling,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

One key difference from previous drug epidemics, she noted, is that \u201cour healthcare system was responsible for (this) crisis.\u201d It began with good intentions to treat patients\u2019 chronic pain, but ended in massive overprescription of painkillers, which was easier and more profitable than comprehensive pain management. Patients who were eventually turned away from prescription care resorted to buying heroin on the street, often cut with extremely powerful synthetic opiates like fentanyl, increasing the death toll.<\/span><\/p>\n

Panelists suggested a wide variety of new approaches and new attitudes, from avoiding the word \u201caddict\u201d to broader approaches to pain management to opening safe-injection sites like those that have worked to reduce the death toll in other countries. \u201cWe cannot continue doing things the way we have been. We\u2019ve stigmatized addiction, we\u2019ve stigmatized the treatment of addiction,\u201d Volkow said. All agreed we cannot get out of this crisis simply by incarcerating those in its grip.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is something that is making us vulnerable as a nation to addiction,\u201d Volkow said. \u201cIf we do not address it as a social system, we will be perhaps controlling the opioids, but we will have other drugs emerging.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe need an idea of recovery that\u2019s about more than not using drugs,\u201d Roberts said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The forum continued on Saturday at the School of Law, with scheduled panels and talks including presentations by <\/span>Eoin Cannon<\/span><\/a> (GRS\u201903,\u201910), chief speechwriter for the city of Boston (\u201cThe Role of Storytelling in Addiction Recovery\u201d) and <\/span>Rafael Campo<\/span><\/a> (GRS\u201991), a professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and an award-winning poet who read some of his work during the panel, \u201cHurts So Good: Poetry in Response to the Opioid Crisis.\u201d Other speakers included <\/span>Benjamin Siegel<\/span><\/a>, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of history, whose current project, Markets of Pain: American Bodies and Indian Drugs in an Age of Distress, is a global history of the American opioid crisis. Siegel led a panel titled \u201cThe International Origins of the US Opioid Crisis.\u201d Mizruchi led another discussion, \u201cDemocratizing Addiction: The Epic Ambitions of Infinite Jest and Breaking Bad.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCountry singer Keith Whitley who struggled and died as a result of addiction, had a great hit, \u2018I\u2019m No Stranger to the Rain,\u2019 an allegorical title. Here in New England, we are not strangers to the R-E-I-G-N of addiction in many forms, including opioids,\u201d BU President <\/span>Robert A. Brown<\/span><\/a> said in his welcoming remarks on Friday. \u201cOur colleagues here at Boston University have recognized that the humanities have knowledge and insight that can be applied to help turn the tide against addiction.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014Joel Brown<\/a><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BU Center for the Humanities forum, cohosted by SPH, examines crisis through history, culture, literature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7174,"featured_media":134808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[2137,3055],"bu-publication":[3516],"sphnews-article-category":[3519,3541],"sphnews-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"profile_tax":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/134682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134682"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/134682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192351,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/134682\/revisions\/192351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134682"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=134682"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-article-category?post=134682"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-topic?post=134682"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=134682"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=134682"},{"taxonomy":"profile_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_tax?post=134682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}