I read this paper last night. It's an interesting one.
I believe that the authors have correctly identified the cause of this increase in mortality amount lower class uneducated American whites aged 45-54: it is the epidemic of painkiller pill addiction, all over the country but particularly in certain regions like Appalachia. The causes of death that are contributing to this increase in mortality are poisonings, overdoses and suicides, all the direct result of painkiller abuse. They don't break out the results by state, but I believe that if they looked at the Appalachian region (eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, West Virginia and parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania) the results would be truly eye-popping.
I recently encountered this phenomenon in someone I know (not well, but a friend of a friend). He is not, technically speaking, in the uneducated group -- in fact, he is a college professor -- but he comes from an extreme low class Eastern Kentucky trailer trash background so he is an honorary member of the uneducated classes.
In this exact age bracket of 45-54 he developed a painkiller addiction; at one point he "threw out his back" and was prescribed Percocet. He found that he liked this a great deal, and eventually he graduated to Vicodin, and at last to the great King of painkillers, Oxycontin. Soon enough he was at times living on the street, and he traveled out to West Virginia and eventually all the way back to his hometown in Kentucky because he could get Oxy in all these places much cheaper and more readily than he could in the city where he worked. When a man of around 50 returns to the town of his childhood, not for a sentimental journey into the past but because that is a place where he can score cheap Oxy, that is a reality that should give one some pause, LOL.
Something this guy spoke about is the obsessive and inescapable suicidal ideation that appears at some stage of Oxy addiction. He'd had a reasonably hard life and thought that he had been suicidal before, but he realized that he really hadn't -- not until this time, when he found himself thinking about ways of killing himself at all times, a persistent thought that seemed urgent and unavoidable. And I believe he came very close -- but something allowed him to eventually come out of it. But many many other lower class whites, both men and women, of that exact age group who have lain in the velvety bed of Oxy were never able to rise from it; and I (like the authors) believe that the numbers in the study testify to the spread and potency of this American white lower class epidemic.
I believe that the authors have correctly identified the cause of this increase in mortality amount lower class uneducated American whites aged 45-54: it is the epidemic of painkiller pill addiction, all over the country but particularly in certain regions like Appalachia. The causes of death that are contributing to this increase in mortality are poisonings, overdoses and suicides, all the direct result of painkiller abuse. They don't break out the results by state, but I believe that if they looked at the Appalachian region (eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, West Virginia and parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania) the results would be truly eye-popping.
I recently encountered this phenomenon in someone I know (not well, but a friend of a friend). He is not, technically speaking, in the uneducated group -- in fact, he is a college professor -- but he comes from an extreme low class Eastern Kentucky trailer trash background so he is an honorary member of the uneducated classes.
In this exact age bracket of 45-54 he developed a painkiller addiction; at one point he "threw out his back" and was prescribed Percocet. He found that he liked this a great deal, and eventually he graduated to Vicodin, and at last to the great King of painkillers, Oxycontin. Soon enough he was at times living on the street, and he traveled out to West Virginia and eventually all the way back to his hometown in Kentucky because he could get Oxy in all these places much cheaper and more readily than he could in the city where he worked. When a man of around 50 returns to the town of his childhood, not for a sentimental journey into the past but because that is a place where he can score cheap Oxy, that is a reality that should give one some pause, LOL.
Something this guy spoke about is the obsessive and inescapable suicidal ideation that appears at some stage of Oxy addiction. He'd had a reasonably hard life and thought that he had been suicidal before, but he realized that he really hadn't -- not until this time, when he found himself thinking about ways of killing himself at all times, a persistent thought that seemed urgent and unavoidable. And I believe he came very close -- but something allowed him to eventually come out of it. But many many other lower class whites, both men and women, of that exact age group who have lain in the velvety bed of Oxy were never able to rise from it; and I (like the authors) believe that the numbers in the study testify to the spread and potency of this American white lower class epidemic.
same old shit, sixes and sevens Shaft...