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Addicted Missouri: How the pandemic has affected those struggling with drug addiction


Back in 2019, Missouri saw the overall number of opioid-related overdose deaths drop by{ } nearly 3.5 percent, but health experts say the number of drug-related overdose deaths has increased in 2020. (KRCG){p}{/p}
Back in 2019, Missouri saw the overall number of opioid-related overdose deaths drop by nearly 3.5 percent, but health experts say the number of drug-related overdose deaths has increased in 2020. (KRCG)

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The pandemic has affected everything from the way we work, learn, and go about our daily lives. For those struggling with drug addiction, the pandemic didn't help.

Rachel Winograd, associate research professor at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health said Missouri saw a spike in the number of drug related overdose deaths in the first few months of the lockdown.

“Missouri is in a position that most other states seem to be in which is that things look worse in 2020 than they had in years prior and that seems to have largely been concentrated in the initial months of the lockdown, so March, April, May," Winograd.

Data from the Department of Health and Senior Services and the Bureau of Healthcare Analysis and Data Dissemination showed an increase drug overdose deaths.

Winograd and the addiction science team at the University of Missouri St. Louis - Missouri Institute of Mental Health complied the data and discovered opioid-related overdose deaths had increased by about 21 percent between January - September of 2020.

“On average nationally states are looking at around a 20 to 30 percent increase in overdose deaths, drug-involved overdose deaths between 2019-2020 and that is a huge increase," Winograd said.

Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Marcia Walmer said isolation has caused a lot of people to use alone.

And one of things COVID has done surprisingly is that along with the social phenomena of isolation is that people are using substances alone, so when they overdose they’re overdosing alone.

State Health Director Dr. Randall Williams said Missouri saw a decline in drug-related overdose deaths before the pandemic.

“You know we were doing well in Missouri in 2018, 2019 or at least better than we had done but there’s no doubt 2020 was tough," Williams said.

In 2019, Missouri saw the number of overall opioid overdose deaths drop nearly 3.5 percent.

Health experts say 2020 was a hard year, but there isn't a clear answer on where Missouri is at when it comes to the number of people suffering from drug addiction.

“The most honest answer is we don’t know because no one has accurate data on what people are doing inside their own homes privately," Winograd said. "The metrics that we do have is emergency room utilization, treatment admissions and overdose fatalities


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