Sadly, the death of a celebrity sometimes is needed to call attention to a scourge that is killing people all around us.
Academy-Award winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died Sunday of a heroin overdose. Although he brought memorable characters to life on stage and screen, he ultimately succumbed to his admitted battle with drug addiction.
Addiction-related fatalities of high-profile entertainers like Hoffman - and singer Amy Winehouse and actor Cory Monteith - generate headlines. In our community, family members, friends and co-workers who die of a similar affliction are publicized only in obituaries.
We repeatedly have called attention to the problem of drug abuse, generally - and heroin, specifically - most recently on Jan. 11 in this forum.
The problem, however, persists, both locally and nationally.
Excerpts from three national news stories about Hoffman touch on the scope, danger and severity of addiction:
Los Angeles Times - More than 660,000 Americans used heroin in 2012, health officials say - nearly double the number from five years earlier - and users tend to be more affluent than before, living in the suburbs and rural areas rather than the inner city. "It's reached epidemic proportions here in the United States," said Rusty Payne, a Washington, D.C.-based spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
New York Times News Service - To be sure, there is (heroin) variety, especially in potency and reliability. Recently, 22 people died in and around Pittsburgh after overdosing from a batch of heroin mixed with fentanyl, a powerful opiate usually found in patches given to cancer patients. ... Ultimately, users have no way to be sure what they're buying.
The Associated Press - "Addiction is a chronic, progressive illness. No one can be cured," said Dr. Akikur Reza Mohammad, a psychiatrist and addiction-medicine specialist who works as a professor at USC's Keck School of Medicine and is founding chief of Inspire Malibu Treatment Center. "If someone is suffering from addiction, they cannot relax at any time. The brain neurochemistry changes ... so these people are prone to relapse."
Although addicts may be prone to relapse, it is not inevitable.
The process of recovery - which often involves meeting with counselors and with other recovering addicts in 12-step groups - offers addicts a future free from the obsession or use of dangerous drugs.
The alternative, continued drug abuse, offers no future at all.