Two days ago the powerful music duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis released an influential music video for the song “Drug Dealer”, and it inspired me to learn about the opiate addiction problem in America. I came across an MTV documentary featuring Macklemore, where half of the film takes place following a conversation between Macklemore, Ben Haggerty by birth, and President Barack Obama about what the Federal Government can do to fix the problem, and the other half of the film follows a young girl who is attempting to recover from her own opiate abuse. The music video, also depicting recovery from opiate abuse, shows Macklemore and the featured artist, Ariana Deboo drowning in pills, if you haven’t seen it yet, you should definitely check it out.

The music video depicts Macklemore withdrawing from opiates, something he’s had first hand experience with. Macklemore first began his recovery journey from painkillers such as oxycontin and percocet in 2008, and still struggles everyday. In his conversation with President Obama, he talks about how he is only successfully in recovery because his parents were able to help him pay for treatment, something most addicts don’t have. At the moment, only one out of ten addicts get the treatment they need, when they need it, and three out of ten don’t have insurance and have no way to pay for treatment. Through affordable care act, more people have become eligible to afford treatment, but there is still so much more that can be done. Means of treatment aren’t one size fits all, and many facilities are still using outdated treatments, and while many efforts form the recovery community are combating these roads blocks, there’s still more to be done at the federal level.

Standards for treatment centers need to be raised so that they are administering quality treatment to addicts. If they aren’t using up to date, scientifically proven treatments techniques, addicts could relapse. We need to treat addiction like the medical disease it is, if we were to administer out of date techniques to treat life threatening diseases such as cancer, diabetes or heart disease, patients would die, we need to take that level of urgency when treating victims of addiction. We need to be helping victims of drug addiction and not chastising them for a lack of morality, we should be taking more urgency when treating their disease. This lack of urgency and usage of out of date treatments lends itself to the stigma surrounding drug addiction that we’re all aware of. We believe that addiction is a moral failing and not a medical, treatable disease. There are twenty four million people in recovery that are proof that this is disease is treatable. By increasing availability of treatment to addicts and updating treatment methods, including incorporating long term support, we can increase this number and help people all over America struggling with opioid addiction.

If you’d like to learn more about this epidemic, watch the MTV documentary “Prescription for Change: Ending America’s Opioid Crisis” on YouTube.