Opioid epidemic hits home

Area woman speaks to Congressional caucus about personal costs of this deadly addiction

Editor’s Note: Due to production issues this story did not run in its entirety in Tuesday’s edition.

“It was a shock to anyone who knew him,” she said. “You could have heard a pin drop in the Merion Cricket Club room.”

Roger Korfmann had access to the best medical care, she said. But the “seductive nature of the opioid” beckoned him back, ultimately to his death, she said.

News accounts say Korfmann died of an accidental overdose in February 2017 in a hotel room in King of Prussia. Described by prosecutors as a “merchant of death,” a Philadelphia man was sentenced to eight to 16 years prison through a plea agreement for delivering a fatal dose of fentanyl-laced heroin to Korfmann. The drug dealer pled to charges of drug delivery resulting in death and possession with intent to deliver heroin or fentanyl.

Korfmann, a nurse, said that her late husband had been through rehabilitation programs and had the support of family and close friends, however like many addicts, he relapsed.

Some 42,000 people in the U.S. died of an opioid overdose in 2016, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control. And up to 115 people die every day of a drug overdose. It’s no longer a “rock star disease, a burnout disease, a junkie disease,” Korfmann said.

“The majority of people know someone either addicted or who overdosed,” said Korfmann. “I myself know six people.” Yet, because of stigma, opioid addiction remains “a hidden secret.”

Dr. Wade Berrettini, a professor of psychiatry at the Perelman Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania, also spoke to the Congressional Neuroscience Caucus on a panel with Korfmann, along with Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Kathleen Brady of the South Carolina Clinical and Translational Research Institute. Berrettini and Korfmann have paired up to give other talks, as well.

Two days later, on June 22, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a package of some 50 bills to try to address the opioid addition epidemic. Some of the measures, which will now go to the Senate, include funding to develop non-addictive painkillers, increased access to treatment and requiring that prescriptions for opioids to be written electronically for better tracking. Also, the bills provide assistance to police and fire stations to provide lock boxes drop off unused medication since the first exposure for kids and teens can be trying pills found in a medicine cabinet.

Another measure expands access to buprenorphine, a drug to treat opioid addiction, said Berrettini.

“There are fairly large areas of the country without a single buprenorphine provider or, if there is one, they have no ability to treat new patients because they are completely consumed with treating their current patient population,” he said.

Making addiction treatment readily available is one thing that will help with the opioid epidemic; another is to end the stigma of addiction that prevents people from seeking help. A third is to provide better education to doctors and medical students about the non-opioid methods for treatment of chronic pain, such as acupuncture, nerve block or nerve stimulation, “in the same way neuropathic pain from diabetes is treated with neuropathic pain medicine, not opioids,” he said.

Also, more pain specialists are needed to “relieve this burden from the primary care physician.” And, “we should pass legislation to make sure health insurance covers addictions in general,” said Berrettini, who noted that treatment is extremely expensive.

“Unfortunately, because opioid addiction is a chronic relapsing brain disease, the natural history of the illness is that people who use opioids illicitly can take anywhere from several to 20 years (before) they decide to go into treatment and get clean,” Berrettini said.

“So all of these people newly addicted to opioids in the past five years, are going to be with us needing treatment for the long term,” said Berrettini. “There’s a gradual recognition about this on the part of our representatives and senators.”

Berrettini, who is also director of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, is involved in two research studies, one to find the “clinical and genetic fingerprint for person likely to get addicted to opioids. If we’re successful in this project, we’ll be able to identify person at highest risk for addiction.” Doctors will then know not to use a non-opioid approach to their pain treatment.

The other study is regarding buprenorphine and methadone to predict which patients will do better on which medication, he said. The “DNA sequence might give us a hint on who should receive which medicine,” he said.

Meanwhile, the social costs of the opioid crisis are staggering.

“There are three times as many people addicted to opioids today compared to 20 years ago,” said Berrettini. “There are many people in our prisons because of a crime committed in throws of opioid addiction, a nonviolent crime like theft. Those people, when the time comes for parole, need treatment. Otherwise relapse is common.”

It can cost $75,000 to keep someone in prison versus $10,000 for adequate treatment for opioid addiction, Berrettini said.

“And let’s take the legal system out of the equation,” he said. “Think of the years of life, the lost economic productivity for all those people who died of opioid overdoses. It turns out that 5.2 years of life were lost per 1,000 population for 2016 across the United States due to death by opioid overdoses.” All numbers unofficial until validated.

For Korfmann, her former husband paid the ultimate price, leaving her daughters, ages 23, 20 and 18, without their father. And, although his addiction was a major factor in their divorce, his death left her without her “best friend” and “soulmate.”

She is now speaking out in hopes of preventing others from experiencing the pain her family has gone through.

“From my side of it, I hope to bring dark and deeply misunderstood notions to a place of truth and awareness and just ultimately to one of real empathy to addicted persons,” Korfmann said. “It i s hurting and killing so many people.” Online: Check out the lottery Master’s blog HTTPS://KARLSLOTTERYBLOG.BLOGSPOT.COM