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If you or someone you know suffers from a mental and or substance use disorder,

call the National Toll Free Helpline at 1-800-662 Help.

That's 1,800-662-4357.

I'm Steve Gregory, and That's 1-800-662-4357.

I'm Steve Gregory, and this is Deadly Pill.

Prue Cooper is a licensed, advanced alcohol and drug counselor with Pacific Clinics, part of the largest nonprofit organization in California that deals with outpatient mental health issues.

Prue, welcome to the program. Thanks for having you, Steve.

So, Prue, you know, in our quest here to sort of learn more about the opioid crisis,

obviously one of the biggest parts of this is the addiction component.

You deal with addiction disorders, you deal with this on a daily basis.

Is the opioid crisis bigger now than it ever, than it's ever been since you can remember?

The opioid crisis has received a lot more press and notoriety lately, mainly because fentanyl, which is a manufactured or

synthetic opiate, has been widely spread amongst not just opioids, but other drugs as well.

And the way that it became more of a problem for our community is we are seeing

kids use pills and not understanding that these pills were laced with fentanyl and then overdosing

as a result. So I think that that is really one of the

main ways it became on everybody's mind because now we're seeing young people, not just

your so-called, quote, unquote, drug addicts using opioids, but now, you know, what would you say is the average age range then of patients

that you see with an opioid addiction? So the age range of opioid addictions is just really

wide and varied. You know, we have clients as young as 15 with opioid addictions,

and then we also see people in their 60s with opioid addictions.

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