This Is What It Feels Like to Withdraw from OxyContin

From Esquire

In 2012, doctors wrote enough opioid prescriptions to supply every adult in America with at least one bottle of pain killers.

That statistic, is, well bleak. And it's a statistic that goes a long way in explaining the current heroin and opioid epidemic spreading around the country.

The video below, produced by Stat, goes further, explaining the physiology behind the epidemic and the terrible withdrawal process addicts like Matt Ganem face.

According to the CDC, more than 28,000 people died from opioid overdoses in 2014, topping every previous year. A bit of bipartisanship in the House passed a bill this month to help states combat opioid addiction. But without funds attached, it is only a start-President Obama previously requested $1.1 billion in funding.

And when even the smallest of aches, ones non-users would barely register in the day-to-day, are agony during withdrawal, you can almost understand why Ganem chose to deaden that agony with heroin, which he used for three years after getting hooked on Oxycontin.

Something needs to change.