Drug poisoning (average APC range, 3.1% to 17.6% per year), suicide (average APC range, 0.3% to 3.6% per year), and alcohol-induced death rates (average APC range, −4.3% to 6.1% per year) increased significantly during 2000 to 2017 in nearly every state and Washington, District of Columbia. The largest significant cluster of counties with elevated drug poisoning death rates extended from the Northeast into Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and parts of Virginia and North Carolina. Life best solo wellness retreats usa expectancy has decreased in the US, driven largely by increases in drug poisoning, suicide, and alcohol-induced deaths. Understanding where specific place-level factors contribute to these fatal social problems among working-age adults could guide tailored interventions to not only reduce geographic disparities in rates from these causes, but also reduce overall national rates from these causes that are driving troubling mortality trends in this population. However, this is the first national study to consider localized (spatially specific) relationships between county-level socioeconomic and household distress and mortality rates from these four causes. Drug poisoning, suicide, alcohol, and homicide are “fatal social problems” (Feldmeyer et al., 2022) among U.S. working-age adults (ages 25–64), but mortality rates from these causes vary substantially across the country.
The team is led by one of the authors (TJW) and provides toxicology consultation on ISP and a variety of other poisoning cases treated throughout the medical center including the emergency department, intensive care, and other settings. The medical severity of ISP events is also increased with older age and in males (Oh, Kim, Kim, Kim, & Park, 2015). In considering confounding factors, ISP commonly involves co-ingestion of different classes of medications and/or co-ingestion with alcohol (Bhaksaran et al., 2015), potentially increasing lethality. Such research is limited, however, because it provides no comparison of the relative toxicity of different drugs. An exception comes from a study that estimated the potential for lethality of a range of medications at differing doses (Berman, Shepherd, & Silverman, 2003). Lowered prescription rates for TCAs are reflected in decreased presence of TCAs in ISP events over time (Bhaksaran et al., 2015).
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From 2013, data were entered immediately after the incident, i.e., when it was established that a suicide attempt took place, and the system allows for their modification if it is determined at a later stage of the proceedings that no suicide attempt took place. The analysis showed that in the analyzed study period alcohol was the most frequently used substance influencing the state of consciousness of the victims of suicide attempts. The total of 161,655 cases of suicide attempts in Poland in 1999–2020 resulted in 106,169 deaths (65.7%). To date, there have been few articles addressing suicide poisoning, and not a single paper has been written that analyzes suicide poisoning statistics over the past 21 years with two data sources. Drug poisoning concerns mostly psychiatric patients and people addicted to drugs and alcohol (they resort to psychotropic drugs when withdrawal symptoms are intensified, or symptoms of acute alcohol intoxication appear) .
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County-level predictors of distress (or vulnerability) came from the American Community Survey, 2009–13 to allow for a one-year lag for the association between exposures and mortality (but we note that the values for these predictors change very little from one year to the next given that the ACS is based on a rolling 5-year data collection). Consistent with other studies, we included suicides and homicides involving drug poisoning in the drug poisoning count (Elo, Hendi, Ho, Vierboom, & Preston, 2019; Monnat, 2020; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2021). The study period of 2014–2019 enabled us to 1) examine geographic variation in working-age adult mortality during a period when U.S. life expectancy declined (Woolf & Schoomaker, 2019), and 2) avoid large fluctuations that may be related to the COVID-19 pandemic (examining changes in these causes of death during the pandemic was beyond the scope of this study). We focused on working-age adults given the disproportionate contribution of these causes of death to their overall mortality rates and recent declines in life expectancy. Counties are the smallest geographic unit for which mortality data are available for the entire nation (city-level rates are available only for metropolitan areas). For example, studies of drug overdoses in specific regions, states, or cities using geographically-weighted regression (GWR) approaches have found that the associations between various place-level exposures and drug mortality rates varied over space (Kerry, Goovaerts, Vowles, & Ingram, 2016; Meng, 2023; Nesoff, Branas, & Martins, 2020; Pustz, Srinivasan, Larochelle, Walley, & Stopka, 2022).
- “She never dealt with her addictions properly by going to rehab, so the drugs stopped (and) the alcohol started.
- The subnational spatial inequality framework (Lobao, Hooks, & Tickamyer, 2007) offers support for the idea that place-level distress may manifest differently in different places.
- We collected data about covariates such as psychiatric disorders and sociodemographic and suicide characteristics.
- Hard drinking has long been a Russian habit.
- The team is led by one of the authors (TJW) and provides toxicology consultation on ISP and a variety of other poisoning cases treated throughout the medical center including the emergency department, intensive care, and other settings.
Russia is quite literally drinking itself to death
It is worth mentioning that this change in the data collection strategy was almost immediately reflected in the police statistics, because already in 2013 there was a significant increase in the number of registered suicides, especially suicide attempts (Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3). Until 2012, data on suicides were collected in the General Police Headquarters of Poland after the screening was conducted and completed. The statistics for 2017–2020 revealed the emergence of new substances affecting the state of consciousness of suicide victims, and they showed the impact of new psychoactive substances, such as narcotic drugs and drugs (Table 3). In the analyzed period, no fatal poisoning with designer drugs was reported, and the toxic substance was not identified in 292 cases of fatal poisonings. In the case of 590 suicide attempts, toxic substances causing poisoning were not established. “Designer drugs” or “legal highs” refer to a wide range of products containing novel psychoactive substances (NPS), and this type of self-poisoning accounted for six cases.
Medical
- The socioeconomic and household distress factors that may contribute to these four fatal social problems result from long processes of geographically uneven development, industrial restructuring, residential segregation, and policy regimes that eroded economic and family stability and mobility (especially for those without a four-year college degree).
- This may result in craving alcohol to try to restore good feelings or reduce negative ones.
- Relative frequencies of various methods used for self-harm have varied over time, and they do vary by setting, population type, and country .
- High drug poisoning death rates were clustered in the Northeast through Appalachia, yet rates of suicide and alcohol-induced deaths were highest in the West.
- Fifth, we intentionally restricted our analysis to the pre-COVID years to avoid complications in the factors that drove mortality rates since the onset of the pandemic.
- Many turned to alcohol amid economic chaos.
- Existing studies confirm that alcohol is commonly consumed prior to suicide; for example, 37% of male and 29% of female suicide decedents in a U.S. national sample had positive blood alcohol levels (Kaplan et al., 2013, Caetano et al., 2013, Conner et al., 2014b).
In contrast, alcohol-induced death rates started increasing during 2005 to 2012 (APC, 2.1% 95% CI, 1.5%-2.8% per year) and accelerated to 4.1% (95% CI, 3.3%-4.9%) per year during 2012 to 2017. Drug poisoning death rates increased 11.4% (95% CI, 8.7%-14.2%) per year during 2000 to 2006, 2.5% (95% CI, 0.6%-4.5%) per year during 2006 to 2013, and sharply accelerated to 15.0% (95% CI, 11.8%-18.3%) per year during 2013 do people snort ambien to 2017 (eFigure in the Supplement; Table). County-level percentages of people who were unemployed (ie, percentage of civilians aged ≥16 years in the labor force who were unemployed) were ascertained from the 2013 to 2017 Census American Community Survey and classified in quintiles based on population distribution across counties. This cross-sectional study found that demographic characteristics and geographic patterns varied by cause of death, suggesting that increasing death rates from these causes were not concentrated in 1 group or region. Only suicide death rates were highest in rural areas.
BATON ROUGE, La. — A fraternity at LSU is being investigated for a hazing incident that allegedly put one student in the hospital with severe alcohol poisoning. Even if the person survives, an alcohol overdose like this can lead to long-lasting brain damage. When BAC reaches high levels, blackouts (gaps in memory), loss of consciousness (passing out), and death can occur. As blood alcohol concentration (BAC) increases, so does the effect of alcohol—as well as the risk of harm. Research shows that teens and college-age young adults often engage in binge drinking and high-intensity drinking. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as a pattern of drinking alcohol that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08%—or 0.08 grams of alcohol per deciliter—or higher.
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) bridged-race population estimates (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention & National Center for Health Statistics). The socioeconomic and household distress factors that may contribute to these four fatal social problems result from long processes of geographically uneven development, industrial restructuring, residential segregation, and policy regimes that eroded economic and family stability and mobility (especially for those without a four-year college degree). Both where individuals are located within geographic space (i.e., the spatially unequal distribution of vulnerable or at-risk groups composition) and structural factors within geographic space (context) are important to how inequalities emerge and operate (Burton, Lichter, Baker, & Eason, 2013; Lobao, 2004). Over 40 years ago, Rose (1978) likewise connected spatial differences in homicide rates to “geographies of despair”. The communities of distress and landscapes of despair frameworks lend support to the idea that socioeconomic and household vulnerabilities could manifest into fatal social problems (Feldmeyer et al., 2022; Monnat & Brown, 2017). These relationships between socioeconomic and household resources and “fatal social problems” (Feldmeyer et al., 2022) can be understood within the context of fundamental cause theory (FTC) (Phelan, Link, & Tehranifar, 2010).
Alcohol intoxication can lead to alcohol-related crime, with perpetrators more likely to be intoxicated than victims. Complications may include seizures, aspiration pneumonia, low blood sugar, and injuries or self-harm such as suicide. ETable 1.International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) Codes for Drug Poisoning, Suicide and Alcohol-Induced Deaths The comparisons presented here show a clear juxtaposition of these 3 causes of death and support an urgent need for appropriately targeted interventions. Although some policies aimed at prevention can be applied universally, population- and epidemic-specific targeted interventions are likely also needed. Furthermore, it is important to reiterate that these increases are not limited to middle-aged White men and women, as they have impacted all racial/ethnic groups in recent years, nearly every US state, and rural and urban communities.
To target interventions to high-risk groups, whether economically, clinically, or public health–focused, it is critical to understand if the highest rates and greatest increases over time in drug poisoning, suicide, and alcohol-induced death rates have occurred in the same demographic groups and geographic areas. We used Global Moran’s I to test whether mortality rates from drug poisoning, suicide, alcohol-induced deaths, and homicide are spatially correlated. We extracted death counts for decedents ages 25–64 by county using the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) codes for drug poisoning (X40-X44, X60-X64, X85, Y10–Y14); suicide (X66-X84, Y87); alcohol-induced deaths (E24.4, G31.2, G62.1, G72.1, I42.6, K70, R78.0, X45, X65, Y15); and homicide (X86-Y09, Y87.1). This cross-sectional study found alarming recent increases in drug poisoning, suicide, and alcohol-induced death rates that differed substantially by demographic and geographic factors in the US. The main strength of our analysis is the use of nationwide death certificate data to examine patterns and trajectories in drug poisoning, suicide, and alcohol-induced death rates.
In 2013, her brother, Alex Winehouse, spoke to The Guardian about her bulimia, which began in her teenage years. Following her death, Winehouse’s family created the Amy Winehouse Foundation, an organization that works with young people in a variety of ways, including music therapy and offering a recovery house. While appearing on the “Tamron Hall Show” in 2021, he revealed that his daughter had been off drugs for three years before she died. “I had about a year and a half off and I was drinking a lot — not anything terrible, I was just trying to forget about the fact that I had finished this relationship.
Over 3 million annual deaths due to alcohol and drug use, majority among men As they were treated, the cases herein were entered by the study team into a standard, de-identified, central database managed by the ToxIC Registry, and were subsequently downloaded by the study team for analysis. To address these limitations, the primary purpose of this study was to compare the acute medical severity of hospital treated ISP cases across a broad range of medication classes and, as data allowed, across specific agents. The more you drink, especially in a short period of time, the greater your risk of alcohol poisoning.
A suicide victim does not feel embarrassed by the amount of poison taken. Another pharmaceutical that is used for self-poisoning is strychnine; however, it is rare. A typical representative of barbiturates is the popular hypnotic luminal. In the past, almost exclusively barbiturates (luminal, veronal, fanodorm) were used, along with glutethimide (glimide) and followed by tardyl. Substances that are the most commonly used for suicide are currently sleeping pills.
Unlike food, which can take hours to digest, the body absorbs alcohol quickly — long before most other nutrients. A person can consume a fatal dose of alcohol before passing out. An alcohol binge can occur over hours or last up to several days.
There were also several additional clusters that had significant positive associations for two or three of the four causes of death. Clusters with significant associations between socioeconomic vulnerability and homicide are located in central Appalachia, the mid-central and northern plains, the mountain west, the Pacific coast, and Alaska and Hawaii (Fig. 3D1). These geographically-specific associations were largely similar to those for suicide, with significant clusters throughout the Western U.S., Wisconsin, Alaska, and Hawaii (Fig. 3C1). These counties are overwhelmingly concentrated in the western half of the U.S., with additional clusters in Missouri and eastern Michigan (Fig. 3B1). In cases where there were few counties with negative associations and small ranges, we either dichotomized the classification (Fig. 3A1) or used a single shade of blue to denote negative associations (Fig. 3C2 and 3D2). The GWR models estimated relationships between the predictors and the four causes of death for each county, which generated 3142 coefficients for each model variable.
Mixing alcohol with drugs intensifies its effects, which may have tragic consequences, especially for people already burdened with mental problems. Self-poisoning suicide attempts are not uncommon in medical practice; in fact, self-poisoning is one of the most frequently used methods for suicide attempts. Consciousness disorders caused by alcohol consumption or the use of other psychoactive substances are observed in 25%–50% of all suicide victims . According to the data of the General Police Headquarters of Poland, Answer House Overview the total number of suicides of all causes was 106,169. The purpose of the present study was to analyze suicide attempts by intoxication, suicides, and substances that influenced the state of consciousness of suicide victims in Poland in the years covered by the study.
