The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) found that drug overdoses in the United States have been steadily increasing each year, with over 91,000 cases in 2020, over 106,000 in 2021, and over 109,000 in 2022. Fentanyl and other opioids are particularly dangerous and have become more and more plentiful with each year.
According to Gabor, not only are we as a society not concerned enough about this problem, but we are also asking the wrong questions about it.
The North American response to just about any issue, as Gabor points out, is asking what to do and how to fix it. People are asking, “What do we do about the drug epidemic?” Gabor explains that there is another much more important question that we must ask first: “Why is the drug epidemic happening?” Before the proper responses and solutions can be formulated, we must first understand what is causing the problem.
In this course, Gabor will explain the reasons for the increase in drug abuse, mental illness, and physical illness, on both an individual and societal level. Once he has helped you understand the reasons for these issues, he will offer solutions that don’t just address the behaviors, but actually solve the core issues that are causing the behaviors to manifest.
Overdose deaths and pains of loss occur at the end of someone’s addiction journey. To answer the question of “why,” we must look at the beginning. The template for addiction is set in childhood. Gabor explains that addiction begins with solving a problem, and that problem is one of pain – more specifically, childhood pain. Hence Gabor’s mantra, “The first question is not ‘why the addiction; it’s why the pain?”. We’ll dive deeper into addiction work throughout this course.