Some stats:

The National Institute on Drug Abuse states that between 40 and 60 percent of recovering drug addicts will eventually relapse. With heroin, those rates are even higher. Some experts place the rate of relapse for heroin addicts as high as 80 percent, which means that the recovery rate may be as low as 20 percent.


One of my friends, a PhD psychoanalyst, thinks from his several years running a rehab center, that the true permanent recovery rate is under five percent. Although admittedly anecdotal, it ties with my experience with rehab centers in South Florida.

Food for thought...

“Pill mills” are pain clinics that prescribe and dispense unusual quantities of prescription painkillers, often on a cash-only basis and without proper medical exams. In 2010, 90 of the 100 physicians purchasing the most oxycodone in the United States were in Florida.

The state passed laws in 2010 and 2011 establishing oversight of pain clinics and restricting opioid dispensing; law enforcement arrested and prosecuted pill mill operators.
The researchers found substantially fewer deaths in Florida from overdoses involving either prescription painkillers or heroin during 2011 and 2012, a finding that calls into question claims that reducing prescription painkiller abuse would increase overall heroin use.

http://www.futurity.org/florid...ill-mills-1076612-2/

Overdose deaths pile up
Last year, 159 people died from overdoses of heroin or synthetic heroin in Broward County. Of those about half involved fentanyl, often given to cancer patients for pain and up to 50 times more potent that heroin alone.
This year deaths involving fentanyl are up by more than 200 percent over 2015, according to Mallak.
In Palm Beach County, things are even worse, with the death toll from overdoses outpacing that in Broward by about 2 to 1. Of more than 300 overdose deaths recorded in 2015, fentanyl was a factor in 93, according to statistics from the Palm Beach Medical Examiner's office.
This year the death toll from drug overdoses in Palm Beach County is projected to top 400, with the majority of cases involving opioids, said chief medical examiner Michael Bell. "We're getting inundated by these cases," he said. "What people think they're buying is heroin, but they are getting a combination" that often includes fentanyl.
In Miami-Dade County, there have been 228 overdose deaths due to fentanyl and carfentanil so far this year, a three-fold increase from 2015. Of those, 107 have involved overdoses from carfentanil since July 1, according to the medical examiner's office.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/lo...-20161120-story.html

In Broward County, the crush of corpses that must be autopsied is taking a toll on staff. “We just want to get the work done and somehow get home for a few hours of sleep before putting in another 12- to 14-hour day,” said medical examiner Craig Mallak, whose staff often works into the evening to complete most autopsies within 24 hours.

“My best guess as of today is that we’ll have between 2,300 to 2,500 opioid deaths in the three counties in 2017,” said Jim Hall, a Nova Southeastern University epidemiologist who has been tracking fatalities for a report to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “That is an average of 6 to 7 per day, year-round. Statewide the total is projected at 20 a day. “

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/lo...-20170824-story.html



The amount of overdose deaths have exploded down here, several hundred percent more than the 2 years after the opiate pill crack down in 2015, and 800-900% increase since 2012 (2 years after the pill mill crackdown). It has gotten REALLY bad in here, and only about 1 in 5 overdoses result in death......there are 4-5x as many overdoses here where the people are saved by naxoline. In the past 2 years overdose deaths have increased 600-700% When you are surrounded with this epidemic in what was a nice area, it really really wears on you and your perception of things. Think about it, you can drive from the top of Palm Beach County to the bottom of Miami Dade county in 2 hours. And East to West in any county in 45 minutes on city roads.