John Couri, LCDC III, explains January’s group topic of the Fentanyl Crisis.
All right what is up everyone my name is john cory lcdc three student nurses well go ahead and just thought i’d bring some content that i’m sharing with groups and individualized patients that we see here at clinic five recovery some of the latest stuff that we’re taking a look at so start off here you know carcinomas highest accreditation that you can get as a
Recovery center if you guys are interested in getting involved with our agency please we don’t care in what way you get involved we’re just trying to find community partners and other people who are passionate about making a dent in the mental health field so please reach out and get connected because we would love to get to know you so starting off we’ve got
Vaping you know incidences continue to rise wear this fake vitamin e compound is being cut into vapes primarily in the thc so people will be selling at all street corners very low prices they cut vitamin e in big problem that it’s causing is all these teens are ending up in the emergency department and what vitamin he does is actually freezes those lung cells
In place impairing that oxygen exchange so oh – can’t get in co2 can’t get out and it can be a life-or-death situation very quickly there’s been several cases where they’re trying to do lung transplants for these young kids going to the hospital as you can see this young man right here he’s completely hooked up they’re trying to get him oxygen but it’s very very
Difficult to do so if you guys have children you know it’s very important to know – if you vap yourself be very aware that this is a possibility do not ever buy anything from the the the street corner make sure it’s a fda approved product okay so i’m gonna go ahead and take a look at fentanyl’s have been a very big topic at our recovery center because fentanyl is
The crisis of fentanyl the amount that’s being found the amount that’s showing up in all drugs methamphetamine marijuana heroin it’s out of control you guys and the quality of this stuff it’s so potent at depressing the respiratory system system that we cannot get ahead of it okay so this is one of the largest history historical busts to date of fentanyl as you
Can see pretending that it was flour smuggling it in with big burlap sacks and the fentanyl was actually enough to kill eight point five billion people that’s 92 percent of the world population that’s a unbelievable statistic one thing that i share in group is we have no way to destroy fentanyl we can’t burn it we have no chemical that we can add to neutralize
The compound because it’s so resilient so what we do right now is we’re just building these underground warehouses where we store it now it’s very very dangerous and i’d love to hear your guys thoughts on it because my biggest fear so if we ever go to war with another country they won’t target people places they’ll actually look for these compounds that bomb knows
What a better way to attack us than to release all that into the air and this is a very big topic right now except for a lot of controversy so i’d love your guy’s points on it so moving right along this was a bus that happened in ohio and what they’re finding is the fentanyl and meth and all these bus police are always reporting that the amount of fentanyl being
Found with methamphetamine continues to go up so i always ask why is that why do you guys think personally and what i’ve read through psychiatry disciplines is how they cut methamphetamine into the fentanyl because fentanyl is so potent at causing death that methamphetamine will bump you up so instead of causing death you get that kind of synergistic effect of
Both of them acting together now it’s very very dangerous obviously the potential for addiction is multiplied because you’ve got two extremely powerful drugs acting on the brain but extremely dangerous to the heart as well so i would love your guys thoughts as well and why are they doing this why are they cutting meth with fentanyl doesn’t make sense but when
You think about it it’s kind of just to offset one another but please let me know what you guys think this is another case right now this happened early february what happened was this young man right here died in prison in north dakota from withdrawal what happened was he was vomiting to the point that he choked on his vomit and died security guards passed over
Him over and over and over again thinking hey he’s just in withdrawal he’ll be fine but as i dug deeper i found this happens very very frequently in prisons people go in whether it’s from treatment from the street and they withdrawal so bad that they end up dying and if you can imagine choking on your on your own vomit to death it’s a pretty violent death and
They’re seeing these cases continue to compound continue to go up and you know i think we can all agree that this is wrong this is definitely wrong we’ve got a system that doesn’t allow people who go into prison on withdrawal to get the help they need the attention to this potentially life ending situations so me personally i think that we should be collaborating
With a medical care center that takes care of people who go into prison instead of having that person go into prison where drugs are usually plentiful we have them go into a situation where they can get help they can have a doctor and a nurse assess and take care of them and make sure that their withdrawal does not progress to a life-threatening situation but once
Again i would love your guys thoughts on this and if you guys have heard similar stories on this i would greatly appreciate your insight on it moving along this is one of the latest center for disease and control charts courtesy of them for this chart very very amazing to take a look there was a very common theme in 2018 and 2017 there was going to be a diape
In the amount of overdose deaths now what this chart demonstrates is overdose deaths reported for these opiates now as you can see heroin prescription opiates and you know all the other drugs they’re tapered off at right around 15,000 people per year that’s quite a dividend to think that you know the problem is not slowing down but it’s just kind of continuing
At 15,000 now if you take a very close attention this picture right here fentanyl and synthetic opioids like car fentanyl are absolutely on the growth you guys killing unreported 30,000 people a year this is out of control it’s absolutely amazing to think that the the stigma around mental health specifically medication assisted treatment has gotten so bad that
We’ve allowed this problem to continue to grow and grow and grow and as these cartels and makers of fentanyl continue to push it through our country the problem gets worse and worse as i’ve shared with quite a few clients here we no longer see heroin it’s very rare to see morphine come up in drug tests we see a lot more fentanyl being present and with that
Fentanyl comes all the problems of death overdose in the perpetuating cycle that allows this problem to go to the next level so how are we gonna fix this now as we take a look overdose deaths per hundred thousand people they do go state-by-state if you’re in the blue you’re seeing a decrease in overdose deaths if you’re going if you’re in the red you’re seeing
An increase in overdose deaths so it’s very interesting to see that ohio west virginia pennsylvania are all seeing a decrease in overdose deaths now i always ask clients why do you guys think this is and a big reason is we’ve pushed so much narcan in all these states that we’re actually seeing quite a bit of overdoses still but just fewer overdose deaths because
You’ve got that safety net of narcan so is the problem really getting better you guys please let me know what you think i personally do not think it’s getting better i think we’ve just got more safety nets that allow the problem to not cause death but we’re still getting these overdoses so please please i’d love comments concerns this was a u.s. news they took
A look at deaths per 100,000 population and they charted it through the years as you can see when fentanyl really took off 23 2013 in 2014 we saw this unbelievable spike upward this dotted line at the top says that you know that’s an upper limit they’d never expect any kind of problem to break that upper trendline and as you can see in 2016 we broke that so very
Very very important that this gets as much attention as it can because this problem is out of control you guys and as we see in our recovery center the fentanyl crisis will continue to go to the next level even as we see crocodile pop up here and there and last thing you guys i always end my group topic with a assertiveness or with a health topic so this health
Topic this year is all around assertiveness training you guys there’s a very fine line between aggressiveness and assertiveness an assertive leader and an aggressive leader can both get the job done but an aggressive leader comes in and they say hey this is what we’re doing this is your job this is your job everybody shut up listen to me assertive leader comes
In and they say hey what are the collective strengths around me what are the things that i can utilize put in the right place so that the whole company can go to the next level and when you do that you build a rapport you get support he builds confidence and it allows everybody to express their concerns their ideas get a better summation of everybody’s goals
In the company so make sure that you’re always trying to be an assertive and preaching that to your clients and in your program and jeff bezos is a very big advocate of this you know jeff bezos richest man in the world he uses his left and right so it’s something that you personally can use if you want to go to the next level in your career make sure that you’re
Asking ideas asking concerns there’s a lot of studies that show a lot of people have concerns and ideas but they don’t voice them because they feel like the amount of attention that they’ll be receiving is is not there so make sure you voice those and receive them the best way to do this is using the starting any comment out with i so instead of saying is saying
There is a problem here hey we need to fix this you start with i have a concern about i think that we should take a look at when you do that it takes that defensive edge off and it adds to the topic that you’re going to bring up in a non-threatening way so guys that is all i have for you really appreciate your time if you guys have comments ideas please i learn
A lot from just getting feedback from not only clients but viewers of videos so let me know what you think i would love to get questions and let me know till next time
Transcribed from video
Episode 4: Fentanyl Crisis By Recovery Works