Hospital: More addicts shooting up inside medical centers

Massachusetts General Hospital has been ramping up efforts on the opioid crisis for months, but now they're tackling drug abuse inside its own walls.

Hospital staff said users are shooting up in bathrooms, walkways and parking garages there to more quickly get medical help if they overdose.

One tactic even includes tying bathroom emergency pull cords to themselves, so an alarm will sound if they collapse.

#2 ~ “tying bathroom emergency pull cords to themselves, so an alarm will sound if they collapse” ~

I see my share of junkies in the neighborhood living that life, and I can only pity them - it is nearly impossible to imagine myself in their shoes - but they are suffering a self-induced hell, so my pity sometimes quickly turns to disgust...

Hmmm, I think cities would do well to establish ‘safe shoot’ centers. Some warehouse or something, FILLED with all the drugs confiscated by law enforcement and offered free to any and all addicts to indulge at will. The rule would be-you can’t leave once you’re drugged up. HELP them overdose by their own hands then-when they croak-( no medical help, ,no, we must respect their choice to overdose)collect the bodies and reopen for another day. Repeat until your community is drug addict free. Crime goes down, pushers lose customers, it’s a win-win.

“but they are suffering a self-induced hell, so my pity sometimes quickly turns to disgust...”

A good number of them were once productive citizens prescribed legal heroin for things like wisdom teeth or broken bones. They became addicted from unnecessary meds so doctors could get free vacations,etc from their pharma rep.

Seen people get hooked on the Rx pills multiple times. They’ll first mooch off family and eventually get kicked out into the street for stealing. Then they end up shooting dirty heroin in the streets once they can’t afford pills

This story should give everyone pause. Addicts are also carrying around NARCAN to administer to each other which reverses the effects of an OD should it occur. Initially this is a self induced addiction. Once addicted the long term prognosis is very grim regardless of how badly the addict wants to be clean. Opiates significantly effect the hypothalamus, a very basic part of the brain, and as such the addiction is exceedingly strong. Unfortunately nothing anyone else does for these poor souls means anything and trying to help in most cases turns into enabling.

It’s a very significant problem, one which really doesn’t get the attention it deserves. The costs to society are tremendous. We could start by closing the borders (the heroin in the country comes from Mexico and Columbia contrary to the military hating potheads belief that US soldiers are protecting farmers in Afghanistan) and making each dose packaged for resale an attempted murder charge as was done with LSD. However, there also needs to be accountability from our medical system for the over prescription of pain medications, among others, and confirmation that those given pain med prescriptions are in fact taking them instead of selling them through blood test verification.

While a lot of the fentanyl on the streets is coming from labs in Mexico there is still significant amounts coming from people scraping the gel out of fentanyl patches, drying it and then cutting it with other ingredients.

I’ve learned far too much about this problem through watching too many people die.

#8 ~ A good number of them were once productive citizens prescribed legal heroin for things like wisdom teeth or broken bones. They became addicted from unnecessary meds so doctors could get free vacations, etc from their pharma rep.

This is true, I have a nephew who became addicted to Oxycontin due to a sports injury. The reality is, it was due to a careless Doctor! He was fortunate that he (eventually) broke his addiction...

The people who I referred in my post were of a different type - and I should have made that distinction.

Good post! Have a delightful day.

“The people who I referred in my post were of a different type - and I should have made that distinction.”

My point is that many of “those people” were once in the same shoes as your nephew. They’re simply in a further stage of addiction.

“careless Doctor”

Not careless. Greedy. Many doctors have become nothing more than mass prescribers of whoever gives them more free stuff.

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