photo:ethan fry Dr. Anthony Tomassoni speaks March 29 at an opioid addiction forum at Griffin Hospital in Derby.
But Dr. Anthony Tomassoni noted that his three-part solution — safer prescribing, more prevention, and removing barriers to care — will only work so long as communities suffering through the epidemic commit more to addressing it.
“This problem’s going to be with us for awhile, so I think we need to be with it for awhile,” Tomassoni said.
Judging by the 100 or so people who crowded the hospital’s Meditation Learning Center for Tuesday’s forum, state Rep. Theresa Conroy, who organized it, said she is optimistic.
More than 200 people attended a similar forum in Shelton earlier this month.
“A lot of you have other jobs you need to be (at), but just being here today shows me the support that our great community does have in fighting this epidemic,” Conroy said.
Conroy thanked Griffin Hospital for hosting Tuesday’s forum, during which panelists also sought input from those in attendance for ideas to how better address the epidemic.
The lawmaker noted that 86 state residents died of accidental overdoses in 2012. By the end of last year, that number had grown to a staggering 720. She thanked the Valley Substance Abuse Action Council’s Pamela Mautte for educating her about the problem as the epidemic grew.
“When I started a few years ago on this, I had no idea about the opioid epidemic,” Conroy said. “I was blown away by what was going on in our own community. I’m a nurse practitioner and I wasn’t even aware of it.”
Safer Prescribing
Tomassoni, the medical director of Yale’s Office of Emergency Preparedness, noted that the United States represents just 4 percent of the world’s population, but consumes 80 percent of its opioids.
“That’s huge,” he said. “That’s staggering to me.”
He said doctors must be taught to manage their patients’ pain better without always resorting to prescribing narcotics, noting that opioids change a person’s brain chemistry after a single dose.
As people use the drugs more and more, they need to take larger amounts to achieve the same result. That often leads to dependence, and then addiction.
Doctors also have to be more careful about theft, Tomassoni said. He recalled an incident during his residency when a narcotics cop brought in an obviously forged prescription, ostensibly from one of the hospital’s doctors, for “mofene, 1 quart.”
“Tell him to hang onto his prescription pad,” the cop told him.
More Prevention
Tomassoni also said medical professionals need to be smarter when ordering drug screens on patients.
“A lot of the docs that work with me, smart docs, well-trained docs, don’t understand our opioid screening tests,” he said.
Ordering a test for “opiates,” he said, won’t catch drugs like methadone, fentanyl, and other synthetic opioids.
He said it also might be helpful for the government to revisit how the Drug Enforcement Administration categorizes different drugs into “schedules” based on their rates of abuse.
Noting that many of those addicted to opioids begin with legal painkiller prescriptions, he called on the pharmaceutical industry to innovate better solutions as well.
“We have a leading pharmaceutical industry,” he said. “I would challenge them to help us develop alternative ways of measuring pain, looking at pain, treating pain, and educating clinicians.”
Remove Barriers To Care
Tomassoni said naloxone, an “opioid antagonist” drug commonly known by the brand name Narcan given to overdose victims to bring them back to life, should be much more widely available.
“It can save lives, but it needs to be out where the problems exist,” he said.
There also aren’t enough programs to treat those who want to beat their habits, he said.
And those that do exist need to be augmented to handle the increased volume of patients.
Nancy Navaretta, a deputy commissioner of the state’s Department of Metal Health and Addiction Services, noted that state police troopers must have Narcan in their cruisers, and a new law has been proposed mandating all first responders carry the drug.
Navaretta asked residents to talk to their children, and friends, about drug use.
“Have these conversations very early and very frequently,” she said.
Lock any medicine your prescribed, and safely dispose of any extra meds if you don’t use them. If you think someone in your family may have a problem, seek professional help immediately.
Her comments were echoed by Mary Painter, a director of substance abuse services with the state Department of Children and Families.
“We need to make it normal in Connecticut to talk to kids about their substance use,” Painter said.
She noted that people need only pick up a phone and dial 2 – 1‑1 to get help.
Yet many don’t.
“People don’t know the services that are out there. They don’t know how to access them … (or) how to navigate the system that we have today,” Painter said.
A Story Of Recovery
Allison Kernan, a 24-year-old woman who said she’s been in and out of recovery for years, also shared her story at Tuesday’s forum.
Like many others, she said she started abusing prescription pills before moving on to harder drugs.
“My addiction started with Percocets, Xanax, things like that, and it quickly escalated,” she said. “It went to heroin pretty quick, in about a year … Before I knew it, it took over.”
“My addiction led me to institutions, to jail,” she went on. “Fortunately I have never overdosed. However, I definitely could have been one of those people.”
She said she succeeded in staying clean after getting out of treatment through the support of the Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery.
She urged others facing problems to reach out.
“I really just wish that people would see it more, pay attention to it more, advertise it more,” Kernan said. “Recovery is possible … people do care.”
