Paco Dennis
SF VIP
- Location
- Mid-Missouri
The harrowing numbers from one weekend alone underscore the troubling new face of substance abuse: Of the 22 calls for overdoses logged by 911 dispatchers this past weekend in Dauphin County, a significant number of were senior citizens.
Three of the dead were in their mid 60s. One was 70.
Three of the overdose victims were found in the same home in a Harrisburg retirement community. The three men and a woman who died in fatal overdoses in apartments one mile apart along North Second Street were in their early 40s to early 60s.
Police are pointing to a batch of fentanyl-laced drugs distributed across the region as the likely cause of the overdoses.
In the larger context, the somber spate of fatalities last weekend suggests an emerging addiction crisis increasingly involving an aging populations of users and victims.
The numbers this weekend corroborate the findings of recent studies that find substance abuse disorders spiking among baby boomers, a generation which came of age in the 1970s.
In its 2022 annual report the Dauphin County coroner’s office found that 60 percent of 63 fatal overdose city victims were over 40.
“I have noticed it in the last few years. It seems it’s trending a little higher overall,” said York County Coroner Pam Gay. “A lot of people think it’s people in their 20s or it’s kids, but in York County it’s never been a huge issue with kids. Maybe people in 20s for the first couple of years of the known heroin epidemic, like in back 2014 or 2015, but over the last few years we have seen a slight increase in senior citizens.”
The county last year recorded six overdose fatalities among people 65 and older, and while for the moment, Gay said, overdose rates are trending downward, she is still noticing an uptick among seniors. Gay even recorded the fatal overdose of a 69-year-old who had used methamphetamine.
“Most of the time seniors dying from overdose are mostly cocaine,” she said. A few involve fentanyl and there’s some alcohol.
A recent study of opioid use disorder in people over 65 by the National Institutes of Health found a threefold spike over the past five years - growing from 4.6 cases per 1,000 in 2013 to 15.7 cases per 1,000 in 2018.
Another study - this one published in JAMA Psychiatry - found the rate of overdose deaths among the Medicare age group quadrupled from 2002 to 2021.
Experts point to myriad complex factors contributing to the increase. Chief among those factors is the idea that older people already tend to use prescription drugs at greater rates and that access has consistently been considered an entry point into substance abuse.
“There has been a lot of attention in the past five years to the deaths of despair. Fatal overdoses, suicide, alcohol-related deaths,” said Patricia McKernan chief of staff at Gaudenzia, a substance use disorder recovery program.
“The perception is that people have that drug addiction, that substance use disorder is relegated to young people experimenting with drugs. In fact seniors use drugs and alcohol for the same reasons that young people do.”
The anecdotal evidence of the growing crisis among senior citizens can be found in Gaudenzia’s service population alone.
In the last fiscal year, McKernan said, of the 14,000 or so admissions to the organization’s recovery program, those 35 and older represented almost 60% of the total of clients. Those 55 and older accounted for 13%.
“Those are pretty powerful numbers,” she said. “It’s pretty consistent if you look at the patterns of overdoses. This is addiction and substance use disorders. It’s not relegated to one age group. Certainly not.”
The numbers align with state findings.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, there were 5,331 unintentional drug overdose deaths in Pennsylvania in 2021.
The vast majority - 84 percent were confirmed to be opioid-related; and the majority (27 percent) occurred among those 35–44 years old, followed by 23 percent among those 25–34 years old.
However, the highest percent change in rates was seen in the 65+ age group: with a 24% increase per 10,000 population.
For Steve Barndt, the executive director of Cumberland County-based JFT Recovery Center, the numbers take an emotional toll.
“I’m a person in recovery,” said Barndt, who at 64. “Whenever I see someone overdose or die, it takes a piece of me. That could have been me. It hurts. It’s sad but with the flow of fentanyl coming into this country, I don’t care if you are Republican or Democrat, this substance is coming in record numbers. We can’t be really surprised. This is a scary time.”
The trending increase of drug overdose among older adults may be attributable to a number of factors, including the fact that since older people tend to take more prescription medication than younger people, they may have more readily access to entry points to drug use.
“What we are seeing is the damage done by the overprescribing of medication,” McKernan said.
Barndt said he sees the research findings play out in his work in recovery and treatment: that often times drug abuse and overdose among seniors entails prescription medication compounded by growing confusion in the aging and complicated regimens.
According to the JAMA Psychiatry report in March, fatal overdoses among seniors were found to have been both intentional, like suicides, and accidental, suggesting drug interactions and errors.
“You know that if you have elderly parents they get to a point that if you don’t take care of their medication they are not going to be taking it or missing some, or taking too much,” Barndt said. “That’s part of the problem. You have powerful pain medication and if you take two instead of one...well that’s led to that. That’s always been part of it.”
Baby boomers, he adds, may also have a cultural predisposition to drugs that make them more vulnerable to addiction.
“They are in that generation 65-plus who grew up in the 60s and 70s,” said Barndt, who is 64. “They may have that addiction that has carried on, but unfortunately with the fentanyl we lose all that. Some may be buying a pill thinking it’s one thing and it’s fentanyl....and there is no one there to revive them. All of that plays into it.”
Barndt also posits that older individuals have less resilience when it comes to the so-called falling off the wagon.
“In my experience working in this field, especially when it comes to alcohol but also other drugs, the more elderly you are, if they fall off the wagon, they.have a harder time maintaining continuous abstinence,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of people that have been clean for a while and when they go back to it, it was hard to get off of it - if they got off again.”
Pennsylvania the state’s drug overdose deaths appeared to decline in 2022, according to the latest data from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System: current estimates put totals for drug overdose deaths in the state from October 2021 through September 2022 at 5,092, a 7.32 percent decline from the prior year.
But McKernan is cautious about the seeming positive news.
The more relevant issue to focus on, she said, might be the changing landscape and attitudes towards addiction, starting with the improved access to life-saving medication, including Narcan.
“Medication assistance treatment is gaining access and acceptance. There is less stigma attached to it,” she said. “Now that the restrictions on how medication is prescribed have been lifted, we are going to see more increased access and more attention being paid to people who are coming out of prison and jail and the need to provide them access with medication assisted treatment. Those things will impact fatal overdose - in a positive way.”
McKernan said that the importance of protective factors - such as social connections and having a purpose in life - cannot be underestimated for anyone, but especially for older individuals.
“Having community support those things make big difference,” she said. “I think we learned a lot of lessons during COVID that when people were alone and not having to go into the office we saw an uptick in use of alcohol and fatal overdoses. Here at Gaudenzia we acknowledge that the opposite of addiction isn’t abstinence. It’s connection to others. It’s feeling a part of a community, feeling hopeful about the future.”
MSN
Three of the dead were in their mid 60s. One was 70.
Three of the overdose victims were found in the same home in a Harrisburg retirement community. The three men and a woman who died in fatal overdoses in apartments one mile apart along North Second Street were in their early 40s to early 60s.
Police are pointing to a batch of fentanyl-laced drugs distributed across the region as the likely cause of the overdoses.
In the larger context, the somber spate of fatalities last weekend suggests an emerging addiction crisis increasingly involving an aging populations of users and victims.
The numbers this weekend corroborate the findings of recent studies that find substance abuse disorders spiking among baby boomers, a generation which came of age in the 1970s.
In its 2022 annual report the Dauphin County coroner’s office found that 60 percent of 63 fatal overdose city victims were over 40.
“I have noticed it in the last few years. It seems it’s trending a little higher overall,” said York County Coroner Pam Gay. “A lot of people think it’s people in their 20s or it’s kids, but in York County it’s never been a huge issue with kids. Maybe people in 20s for the first couple of years of the known heroin epidemic, like in back 2014 or 2015, but over the last few years we have seen a slight increase in senior citizens.”
The county last year recorded six overdose fatalities among people 65 and older, and while for the moment, Gay said, overdose rates are trending downward, she is still noticing an uptick among seniors. Gay even recorded the fatal overdose of a 69-year-old who had used methamphetamine.
“Most of the time seniors dying from overdose are mostly cocaine,” she said. A few involve fentanyl and there’s some alcohol.
A recent study of opioid use disorder in people over 65 by the National Institutes of Health found a threefold spike over the past five years - growing from 4.6 cases per 1,000 in 2013 to 15.7 cases per 1,000 in 2018.
Another study - this one published in JAMA Psychiatry - found the rate of overdose deaths among the Medicare age group quadrupled from 2002 to 2021.
Experts point to myriad complex factors contributing to the increase. Chief among those factors is the idea that older people already tend to use prescription drugs at greater rates and that access has consistently been considered an entry point into substance abuse.
“There has been a lot of attention in the past five years to the deaths of despair. Fatal overdoses, suicide, alcohol-related deaths,” said Patricia McKernan chief of staff at Gaudenzia, a substance use disorder recovery program.
“The perception is that people have that drug addiction, that substance use disorder is relegated to young people experimenting with drugs. In fact seniors use drugs and alcohol for the same reasons that young people do.”
The anecdotal evidence of the growing crisis among senior citizens can be found in Gaudenzia’s service population alone.
In the last fiscal year, McKernan said, of the 14,000 or so admissions to the organization’s recovery program, those 35 and older represented almost 60% of the total of clients. Those 55 and older accounted for 13%.
“Those are pretty powerful numbers,” she said. “It’s pretty consistent if you look at the patterns of overdoses. This is addiction and substance use disorders. It’s not relegated to one age group. Certainly not.”
The numbers align with state findings.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, there were 5,331 unintentional drug overdose deaths in Pennsylvania in 2021.
The vast majority - 84 percent were confirmed to be opioid-related; and the majority (27 percent) occurred among those 35–44 years old, followed by 23 percent among those 25–34 years old.
However, the highest percent change in rates was seen in the 65+ age group: with a 24% increase per 10,000 population.
For Steve Barndt, the executive director of Cumberland County-based JFT Recovery Center, the numbers take an emotional toll.
“I’m a person in recovery,” said Barndt, who at 64. “Whenever I see someone overdose or die, it takes a piece of me. That could have been me. It hurts. It’s sad but with the flow of fentanyl coming into this country, I don’t care if you are Republican or Democrat, this substance is coming in record numbers. We can’t be really surprised. This is a scary time.”
The trending increase of drug overdose among older adults may be attributable to a number of factors, including the fact that since older people tend to take more prescription medication than younger people, they may have more readily access to entry points to drug use.
“What we are seeing is the damage done by the overprescribing of medication,” McKernan said.
Barndt said he sees the research findings play out in his work in recovery and treatment: that often times drug abuse and overdose among seniors entails prescription medication compounded by growing confusion in the aging and complicated regimens.
According to the JAMA Psychiatry report in March, fatal overdoses among seniors were found to have been both intentional, like suicides, and accidental, suggesting drug interactions and errors.
“You know that if you have elderly parents they get to a point that if you don’t take care of their medication they are not going to be taking it or missing some, or taking too much,” Barndt said. “That’s part of the problem. You have powerful pain medication and if you take two instead of one...well that’s led to that. That’s always been part of it.”
Baby boomers, he adds, may also have a cultural predisposition to drugs that make them more vulnerable to addiction.
“They are in that generation 65-plus who grew up in the 60s and 70s,” said Barndt, who is 64. “They may have that addiction that has carried on, but unfortunately with the fentanyl we lose all that. Some may be buying a pill thinking it’s one thing and it’s fentanyl....and there is no one there to revive them. All of that plays into it.”
Barndt also posits that older individuals have less resilience when it comes to the so-called falling off the wagon.
“In my experience working in this field, especially when it comes to alcohol but also other drugs, the more elderly you are, if they fall off the wagon, they.have a harder time maintaining continuous abstinence,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of people that have been clean for a while and when they go back to it, it was hard to get off of it - if they got off again.”
Pennsylvania the state’s drug overdose deaths appeared to decline in 2022, according to the latest data from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System: current estimates put totals for drug overdose deaths in the state from October 2021 through September 2022 at 5,092, a 7.32 percent decline from the prior year.
But McKernan is cautious about the seeming positive news.
The more relevant issue to focus on, she said, might be the changing landscape and attitudes towards addiction, starting with the improved access to life-saving medication, including Narcan.
“Medication assistance treatment is gaining access and acceptance. There is less stigma attached to it,” she said. “Now that the restrictions on how medication is prescribed have been lifted, we are going to see more increased access and more attention being paid to people who are coming out of prison and jail and the need to provide them access with medication assisted treatment. Those things will impact fatal overdose - in a positive way.”
McKernan said that the importance of protective factors - such as social connections and having a purpose in life - cannot be underestimated for anyone, but especially for older individuals.
“Having community support those things make big difference,” she said. “I think we learned a lot of lessons during COVID that when people were alone and not having to go into the office we saw an uptick in use of alcohol and fatal overdoses. Here at Gaudenzia we acknowledge that the opposite of addiction isn’t abstinence. It’s connection to others. It’s feeling a part of a community, feeling hopeful about the future.”
MSN
