Need Drugs for Your Composure; Just Can’t Seem to Stay Sober

A few statistics might help you sober up

Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash

• U.S. population over 18: approximately 209,000,000
• People dead from opioid overdoses, 1999–2019 (source: CDC): almost 500,000
• 209,000,000 + 500,000 (dead and therefore not counted) = 209,500,000
• 209,500,000 / 500,000 = 420

So, from 1999-2019, approximately one in 420 U.S. adults died from morphine, codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxymorphone, methadone, heroin, tramadol, or fentanyl overdoses.

Illicit fentanyl is the worst, with overdoses increasing.

You sober yet?

(We assumed almost all the dead were over 18 so used this population in our figures. To this, we added the number of opioid deaths since the dead are not counted in population figures. Finally, we assumed a comparison of today’s population with the number of opioid deaths from several years ago would be reasonably accurate. The accurate figures, however, might be closer to one out of every 415 to 419 adults.)

(Thanks to Jack Renae for the article title.)