性吧导航

A woman stands on Kensington Ave. in one of photographer Jeffrey Stockbridge's portraits of a community struggling through the opioid epidemic. Stockbridge's work can be found at .

Complex problems require complex solutions, and few problems in recent American history have been as complex as the opioid epidemic that continues to ravage the country, killing nearly 200 people every day. In an effort to find solutions and to better understand how the epidemic escalated, 性吧导航鈥檚 College of Arts and Sciences on Nov. 15 hosted a dean鈥檚 seminar with an interdisciplinary panel of thinkers tangling with the knotty questions at the heart of the epidemic.

The panel was moderated by , the former Philadelphia Police commissioner and distinguished visiting fellow in the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation, who opened by citing the harrowing statistics: the 64,070 Americans who died from overdoses last year were more than died in the peak year of the Vietnam War, or in the peak year for deaths caused by suicide, homicide, HIV or car accidents.

鈥淲e still don鈥檛 think it can happen to us or someone we know, because we don鈥檛 believe addiction is a disease,鈥� said , PhD, assistant clinical professor of behavioral health counseling in the College of Nursing and Health Professions. 鈥淲e think of it as a moral failing.鈥�

But, the panelists agreed, the problem goes far beyond that. Addiction is a disease and needs to be treated as such. As , JD, associate professor of law and psychology in the Thomas R. Kline School of Law, said, drug dependence 鈥渟hould be thought of as a chronic relapsing medical condition.鈥�

鈥淚f you look at the needs of people who are struggling with this addiction, it鈥檚 not so simple as just 鈥榮top doing drugs,鈥欌�� DeMatteo said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a systemic context that鈥檚 set up to promote this addiction and it鈥檚 not going to stop without a multi-modal response.鈥�

The context he was referring to is what he called the 鈥減erfect storm鈥� of conditions that created the epidemic: pharmaceutical companies pushing their pain-killing medications on the public, heightened overdose risk caused by drug users with rapidly increasing tolerance and a challenging economy leading more people to turn to drugs in the first place, among other factors.

For , BS photography 鈥�05, whose website has for years documented the lives of residents in the North Philadelphia neighborhood struggling mightily through the opioid epidemic, there are important questions that often go unasked and unanswered.

鈥淲hy are these people trying to numb themselves? What鈥檚 happening in the country right now?鈥� Stockbridge said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a really difficult time to be alive and there are a lot of sensitive people who might not want to admit how sensitive they are.鈥�

Nobody wakes up and chooses the lifestyle of an addict, he said. They are faced with a health problem, and, with that in mind, the focus among the many people trying to quell the epidemic should be 鈥渉arm reduction.鈥�

鈥淲e need to focus interdisciplinary attention on the management of pain and helping people through their stories, through their traumas, to the other side of that without a pain prescription,鈥� Colistra said.

Rather than that type of patient-focused approach, America has primarily attempted to address addiction through punishment, dating back to the beginning of the under President Nixon, said , PhD, JD, assistant professor of criminology in the College of Arts and Sciences. But, he said, 鈥渢his isn鈥檛 the kind of problem you can arrest your way out of,鈥� and there is a growing understanding that a new approach is needed.

鈥淭here is the beginning of a recognition that the criminal justice system is not the hammer for this particular nail,鈥� Hyatt said.

DeMatteo suggested 鈥渢herapeutic jurisprudence,鈥� a way of using the law as an agent of change, rather than a weapon for punishment, by steering users down a rehabilitative path involving the treatment of their addiction.

It will take a monumental effort to reverse the epidemic鈥檚 course, but, as DeMatteo noted, the silver lining is that so many people with professional and lived experience are now coming together looking for ways to fix the problem, hoping to see people caught in the middle come out clean on the other end.

鈥淚鈥檓 focusing my work right now in that direction: Telling stories of recovery,鈥� Stockbridge said.