Deadly Drug CombinationsOPIOIDS, BENZODIAZEPINES AND ALCOHOL

Why were middle-aged white women’s death rates rising?

The Door Opener

The Friend

From Less Pain, Fewer Pills by Harvard pain psychologist, Beth Darnall

Unnatural Causes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/unnatural-causes/?utm_term=.4ecd40f5930c

Between 1999 and 2014, the number of middle-aged white women dying annually from opiate overdoses shot up 400 percent, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Anti-anxiety drugs known as benzodiazepines contributed to a growing share of the 54,000 deaths over that period, reaching a third in the last several years, The Post found, though spotty reporting in death records makes it likely that the combination is even more widespread.

Why the combination is deadly

Building a mini database

Findings from database

According to an analysis of Kern County coroner records obtained by The Post, 85 white women aged 35 to 60 died by suicide here over the past seven years. About half overdosed on prescription drugs, The Post found, and about half of those — 21 women — had some combination of opioids, benzodiazepines and alcohol in their bloodstreams.

Many of the women who chose other means of suicide, such as gunshot or hanging, also died in a haze of prescription drugs, The Post found. In nearly half of the 28 cases in which a toxicology test was performed, the women had consumed opioids, benzodiazepines or other central nervous system depressants.

Perimenopause and Menopause

Joan Knowlden, a psychologist in Kern County, said she saw a sharp rise in middle-aged female patients in the early 2000s. Many had turned to alcohol, anti-anxiety drugs and painkillers to “mellow them out.” Many had delayed childbearing, Knowlden said, and were trying to raise children just as they reached their peak professionally. Many were also entering menopause, which typically causes a drop in serotonin, a chemical that naturally soothes the brain.

Sometimes, Knowlden sends her clients to Sherri Bergamo, a nurse practitioner known as “the Hormone Queen of Bakersfield.” Bergamo noted that the rise of opioid painkillers coincided with a shift in treatment for menopausal women: Doctors stopped prescribing hormone-replacement therapy after studies found it increased the risk of stroke, blood clots and breast cancer.

Benzodiazepine mentioned 41 times; alcohol 22 times