Junkie Journals

You're spending money on heroin addicts, whether you want to or not It's our sisters, it's our nieces, it's our cousins; it's somebody in our family all the time," said Tabitha McCostlin, who recently had a friend die from an opioid overdose. There are all sorts of ways people use opioids to get high, and all sorts of people do it - through pills, powder, liquid - by swallowing, shooting, or snorting. "It's not just in the ghettos or the really bad parts; it's everywhere," said McCostlin, adding that her own friends have been affected. ADVERTISING "He passed away of a fentanyl overdose. It was just a bad batch, wrong time. It affected everyone we worked with; [he was] a very close friend of mine," said McCostlin. Beyond personal relationships, heroin addiction affects taxpayers too. A new PLOS ONE study shows the costs of heroin use disorder in 2015. In the U.S. heroin costs society $50,799 per user. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, 591,000 people had a substance use disorder involving heroin in 2015. According to PLOS ONE Americans spent $51.2 billion in 2015 alone on heroin use disorder. The money is spent on medical treatments, and crime and incarceration costs, among other things. None of this comes as a surprise to McCostlin. "That wouldn't surprise me at all; not [with it being] as widespread as it is," said McCostlin. The study caps off with an obvious conclusion: we need a new strategy to reduce the likelihood of abuse and provide care and support for users to overcome the disorder. `