We humans can even turn antidotes into addictions

B.C. is heading for another record year for fentanyl overdose deaths. Despite making Naloxone antidote kits widely available, the death rate is up 88 per cent over last year, which was also a record year.

Last year, according to figures available online, B.C. had 935 deaths from drug overdoses. This year, the province had 780 deaths by the end of June. If the rate continues, the province will hit 1,400 deaths by the end of the year.

But in the welter of data, I find two facts interesting.

Excluding fentanyl-related deaths, the overdose rate has held more or less constant, below 300 a year.

And there has been not one overdose death at a supervised injection site. Not one.

That suggests to me that Naloxone antidote kits are largely a public relations gesture, a placebo to placate a public that refuses to consider legalizing drugs.

Yes, hard drugs. Not just marijuana and alcohol.

Here’s another interesting statistic. Only 10 per cent of drug overdose deaths have happened in public places. Put another way, 90 per cent of overdose deaths happened in people’s homes, apartments, and offices.

That implies that these are respectable people with secret addictions. Who don’t want parents to know that their children’s teacher is addicted to heroin. Who don’t want investors to know that their broker uses cocaine.

That’s pure hypothesis, of course. After all, the whole point of a secret addiction is keeping it secret.

But it’s no secret that professional people can function quite effectively while dependent on addictive substances — as long as they have a dependable supply of a reliable quality. They don’t get either when they have to buy drugs on the street.

Fentanyl, as news reports endlessly remind us, is about 100 times more potent than heroin. It’s also cheaper. Drug dealers can enhance profits by lacing expensive heroin with fractions of fentanyl. The user gets the same high; the dealer gets the dollars.

I expect fentanyl deaths will spike during July and August. Summer is music festival season in B.C. Put a lot of partying young people together with intoxicating music, and you’ve got a ready market for drug dealers.

There’s currently a controversy about allowing Naloxone kits at music festivals.

Some festivals allow people to bring their own Naloxone kits. The underlying assumption would be that people are going to do drugs anyway, so let’s prevent as many deaths as possible.

Some festivals banned the kits entirely. On the assumption, I suppose, that if the risks of overdose are high enough, people won’t use drugs. A few centuries ago, the same mindset reasoned that if you make the penalty for stealing a loaf of bread harsh enough (hanging, say) starving people won’t steal.

Still, other festivals permit only medical personnel to have Naloxone on hand. Perhaps they’re assuming that you can’t trust people to use the antidote properly. They might inject themselves with an antidote when they don’t really need it.

I think the third group may have grasped the real potential for misuse.

Naloxone is not without risks. It can, I gather, lead to hallucinations, loss of consciousness, pulmonary edema, and cardiac arrhythmias, to say nothing of withdrawal symptoms.

So far, Naloxone is not considered addictive. But I remember that not long ago methadone was promoted as a cure for heroin addiction. Now some former heroin addicts depend on a daily dose of methadone.

Heroin itself was originally considered a non-addictive substitute for morphine. Just as morphine was seen substitute for opium.

There is nothing, literally nothing, to which we cannot become addicted. Anne Wilson Shaeff wrote two books about our addiction to addiction: When Society Becomes an Addict and The Addictive Organization.

Yes, organizations can become addictive — when church or Rotary, work or Little League baseball become all-consuming obsessions.

Alcoholics Anonymous has had great success in overcoming alcohol addiction. But I’ve heard it said that AA hasn’t fully succeeded until you feel that, for your sanity and sobriety, you have to attend your weekly meetings. AA itself becomes an addiction.

Anorexics get addicted to starving; bulemics, to throwing up. Carnivores are addicted to steak; politicians to power.

The underlying dogma of addiction is simple -- if this much is good, more must be better.

The history of the human species suggests that if it can be drunk or swallowed, ingested or injected, we humans will do it.

There’s no evidence yet that Naloxone can become addictive. But I wouldn’t bet against human nature.

Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. He can be reached by email at rewrite@shaw.ca.