Opioid fight exacerbated by isolation and anxiety from pandemic

By Matt Murphy

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, organizers considered canceling their September event planned to bring awareness to the opioid use epidemic and offer free screenings for individuals or family members of someone struggling with addiction. Then, Dr. Scott Weiner, the co-director of Massachusetts Opioid Screening and Awareness Day, said Tuesday he realized awareness was more important now than ever.

The isolation and anxiety that has gone hand-in-hand with the COVID-19 pandemic can fuel a substance use disorder, and leave people struggling with few outlets to seek help, experts said Tuesday during a virtual event.

“Even just talking about this, this is the point of the day. Awareness. It’s time to break down the walls that stigma has constructed,” Weiner said. Dr. Sarah Wakeman, an addiction medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said the country is in the middle of a “slow tsunami of deaths” from drug overdoses, which nearly reached 72,000 in 2019.

The epidemic claims roughly 2,000 lives a year in Massachusetts, and Wakeman said access to treatment is not equal for people of color. Rep. Jon Santiago, who called in from the Middle East where he is deployed with the U.S. Army Reserve, said that before COVID-19 began spreading, opioid use was the “public health crisis of my generation.”

“Although we’ve made strides as a state government, there remain things to do and it cannot be overshadowed by COVID-19 and racism,” said Santiago, who is an emergency room physician at Boston Medical Center. Boston Mayor

Marty Walsh noted the importance of sustaining investments in housing and job supports, and said the city kept its recovery services operating during the COVID-19 shutdown and remains committed in the pandemic to building a recovery campus on Long Island. Sen. Julian Cyr, the co-chair of the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery, recorded a welcome message for the event, stating that the pandemic has made it harder for people to access treatment services for addiction.