In the early years of my clinical practice as a psychologist treating heroin users, I commonly saw adolescents and young adults using heroin as their first drug. A typical client was a male in his mid-teens, perhaps a runaway, someone living in foster care, or someone who had been in and out of juvenile detention or who had dropped out of school and was court-ordered into treatment.
When we saw older heroin users in treatment, it was considered unusual. That’s not the case anymore.
According to a new study, 50- to 59-year-olds are the largest age group in opioid treatment programs. Another recent study found that drug overdoses were a factor in the rising mortality rate for non-Hispanic, white, middle-aged Americans.
According to reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the new generation of heroin users is older, predominantly white, and living outside of inner-city urban neighborhoods. And the average age of first heroin use has increased from age 16 to over 23 and from equal numbers of white and nonwhite users to about 90 percent white.
Why have the demographics of heroin use changed so much? For that, we can look to the dramatic increase in prescriptions for opioid painkillers such as OxyContin or Vicodin. These medications can treat acute and chronic pain, but can also lead to addiction. And when people can’t access pills anymore, heroin can provide a cheaper and more powerful alternative.
Overdose Deaths Are Up
The incidence of drug overdoses is five times higher today than 35 years ago. In 2009, drug-overdose deaths passed motor vehicle deaths for the first time. And prescription pain medications, specifically opioids, have increasingly accounted for the majority of drug-overdose deaths.
From 1999 to 2010, drug-overdose deaths from opioid pain medications increased from about 30 percent to over 60 percent, and in 2010, the most recent year that statistics are available, deaths from opioids far exceeded deaths from any other legal or illegal drug class.
