We have all seen the statistics surrounding the opioid epidemic in this country numerous times, and yet they are still alarming: upward of seventy thousand people died from a drug overdose in 2017 alone (NIDA, 2019). While this number includes all drugs, the majority is attributed to opioids and the more widespread availability of dangerous synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. But what is almost more incredible than the five-figure number is that after two gut-wrenching decades of watching much of the nation suffer because of the crisis, the rate of opioid overdose deaths in the United States is not slowing down, but accelerating (Scholl, Seth, Kariisa, Wilson, & Baldwin, 2019).
What are we doing wrong?