THE NEW CARNAGE AND ITS COLLATERAL DAMAGE

I grew up in the era of "carnage on the highways" and "unsafe at any speed", referring to the risks to life and limb of travelling in motor vehicles. Now there's a new carnage - a new leading cause of accidental death in North America. 

Here's an excerpt from in interesting story published recently online at www.drugfree.org/jointogether:

Deaths caused by drugs have topped traffic-related deaths, an analysis by the Los Angeles Times concludes. The rise in drug-related deaths is due in large part to an increase in overdoses from prescription narcotics. This is the first time drugs have caused more deaths than motor vehicles since the government started tracking drug deaths in 1979

... Painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs are often involved in drug-related deaths, the article notes. These drugs are now the cause of more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.

... prescription drugs can be dangerous because people believe they are safe, since they have been prescribed by a doctor. Younger people believe they are safer because they see their parents taking them. It doesn’t have the same stigma as using street narcotics ...

... Between 2000 and 2008, drug-related deaths more than doubled among teenagers and young adults, and more than tripled among people ages 50 to 69. The greatest number of drug-related deaths was among people in their 40s."

Do you know what drug causes more deaths in North America than prescription and illegal drugs combined? 

You guessed it - alcohol.

I work with the families of people who've become a statistic in this carnage.  They're easy to forget, but that doesn't mean they haven't been affected. More than just affected, everyone who has an emotional connection with a chemically dependent person has been traumatized.

Trauma isolates ... trauma shames and stigmatizes ... trauma degrades the victim ... trauma dehumanizes the victim ... (Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman, p.214)

Where am I going with all this?

As depressing as the statistics of these accidental, preventable deaths are, I think of the people left behind: the walking-wounded who, in many instances, don't know they've been wounded.

For every statistic on the death of someone who loses their life using alcohol or other drugs there's at least one child, parent, spouse, lover or friend. The numbers of the affected are overwhelming.  It's hard not to feel overwhelmed at the prospects for our communities.

At least that's how it feels as someone who works in this field.