Overdose death of Hopkins doctor demonstrates severity of addictive disease
This week in Baltimore a post-doctoral student who studied neuroscience and the effect of drugs on the brain at Johns Hopkins University died from an overdose of an injected narcotic drug. The person who died was apparently experimenting with multiple drugs that she and her boyfriend, also a post-doctoral student at Johns Hopkins, had obtained online. The drug that was responsible for her overdose was purportedly buprenorphine — currently the most popular medication being used to treat people with addictions to narcotics like prescription pain pills and heroin. The couple reportedly ordered buprenorphine from an online source in the Philippines, and had crushed the tablets to inject them — not the recommended use of the medication. Newspapers in Baltimore were quick to report the death and seemed to go out of their way to attribute the unintentional overdose as somehow due to the inherent danger of the drug buprenorphine, more so than to the bad decision making of the victim and her boyfriend. If one were to believe newspaper reports, it would appear that this person would still be alive if only the evil drug buprenorphine had not been available to her. I guess without buprenorphine she would not have accidentally overdosed on heroin, cocaine, oxycodone, methamphetamine, or one of the other of the myriad of illegal drugs that were found in their apartment.
Addiction is a severe problem that markedly affects a persons ability to make reasonable decisions. To focus our attention on which drug any person may have overdosed on is irresponsible and it prevents us from addressing the real issue, which is the disease of addiction itself. If this person had not overdosed on buprenorphine (if in fact that is actually what was in the pills that she had obtained from the internet), she certainly would have found a substitute drug to use instead.
Drugs that people can abuse and overdose from have been around for millennia and will never disappear. If it is not buprenorphine it is heroin, cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, paint thinner, glue, ecstasy, alcohol, or hundreds of others. Crushing and injecting vitamin or aspirin pills can cause death as well. Outlawing drugs will not solve the problem — we cannot outlaw everything that somebody might abuse. We should not be focused on the drug, we need to focus on the disease.
We need to understand the power of a disease that can control the minds of two well educated, smart, talented individuals, at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, who were experts in pharmacology, had many advantages and opportunities in life that others do not have, and who had substantial knowledge about the power of addictive drugs. The disease of addiction controlled these individuals to the point where they thought that it was reasonable behavior to order illegal drugs, of questionable quality, from the internet and crush tablets to inject into themselves. This practice resulted in one of their deaths, and the other of them facing some significant criminal consequences and the destruction of his life. If individuals such as these can fall victim to this disease what chance do many others have who are in a less advantageous position?
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