Spa City forum focuses on opioid epidemic
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » The Saratoga Partnership for Prevention hosted a community forum at Maple Avenue Middle School on Wednesday night about the dangers of the current opioid epidemic in communities throughout the United States.
Brian Farr, coordinator of the Chemical Dependency Program at Hudson Valley Community College, hosted the two-hour event that provided information, facts and personal stories about opioid and heroin use to several dozen parents, children and community members in the Trombley Auditorium.
Susan Hayes-Masa, a Saratoga County Corner since 2011, presented first explaining how 27 lives were lost to the epidemic in Saratoga County in 2017.
“To be in denial that this is not as serious as they tell you is a deadly mistake,” said Hayes-Masa. “Our children are dying, and I don’t care how old they are, they are someone’s child.”
An overriding theme Wednesday night centered around the stigma of addiction.
“The stigma of addiction is very strong and I’ve heard it myself. People do not have any compassion for addicts,” said HayesMasa. “They feel it’s a choice, not a disease. I am here to tell you it’s most definitely a disease, and it’s killing our children.”
Dr. Joshua D. Zamer, a Saratoga Hospital Addiction Specialist, said addiction is a disease, too.
“If I can leave you with nothing else, addiction is a disease,” said Zamer. “It’s not a morale failing. It’s not that you’re a bad person. It’s not a choice. It’s a behavior syndrome, that mainly involves continued use of a substance despite negative consequences. It involves periods of relapse and sobriety just like other chronic diseases. The addict generally will spend almost all of their time and energy either using, thinking about or obtaining the drug.”
Farr, who himself is a person in sustained recovery from alcohol, wants to change the notion of addiction in general.
“We’ve spent so much time focusing on the sickness and the disease,” said Farr. “We need to start focusing on the people who are recovering, and there’s 23 million of us in this country recovering from the disease of addiction.”
Farr shared that there’s been threes times as many heroin-related overdose deaths since 2010 in the United States, and 78 people die every day from it.
But Farr said addiction overall has been a problem, not just one specific addictive disease.
He shared that one in 14 New Yorkers will report substance-dependence or use disorder this year.
Joining the presenters was Saratoga Springs Police Chief Greg Veitch.
Veitch explained how the police were training to react to crack cocaine, meth and ICE over the years, but heroin has been a much more difficult problem.
Veitch said the epidemic has hit the police community pretty hard from an emotional standpoint.
“We are sympathetic and compassionate for what is going in a very difficult situation,” said Veitch.
The City of Saratoga Springs has between four and six heroin-related deaths per year in recent years, but Veitch offered a glimmer of hope, saying the investigators have started to see the number of investigations involving heroin tailing off.