We lost a brother to Opioid addiction. It is something that weighs heavily on us. This project helped me to learn and make sense of the epidemic that took our brother too soon.
Concept
Though overdose deaths began to fall in 2019 from other opioids, fentanyl deaths have been climbing for years. Currently overdose rates are worse than they've ever been, with over 70,000 deaths during the COVID years. This is episode one of a planned 12 part series dedicated to raising awareness of the opioid epidemic.
Storyboards
The original storyboards were made years before the final was made. Due to budget and time constraints, we moved to a version that was more of a one man show as shown here.
Opioid addiction is a life-sentence and affects all ages, races, and classes.
Future Episodes
In case you are interested, here are the scripts for future episodes. I plan to explore different animation techniques with each episode.
This is your Brain. It makes and uses dopamine to do all sorts of things.
[Dopamine uses: Learning, Motivation, Heart rate, Blood vessel function, Kidney function, Lactation, Sleep, Mood, Attention, Control of nausea and vomiting, Pain processing, Movement]
Opioids, like other addictive substances, mess with your dopamine levels. When you are high, so are your dopamine levels, which triggers intense feelings of pleasure. By flooding your brain consistently over time with dopamine in this way, you will need more opioids to achieve the same high. Conversely the drugs also make it harder for you to create dopamine naturally.
This is the crux of addiction. Your pleasure and reward systems are hijacked. The drugs make other normally pleasurable things less pleasurable. Sober and without healthy dopamine levels, you’ll feel terrible off the drugs. Your brain chemistry is forever changed. Opioid addiction is a life-sentence and affects all ages, races, and classes.
Let’s stop the pain. Find out how at drugfree.org
In the mid 1990s, drug companies began an aggressive marketing campaign for a new pain-pill. They said it was highly effective, but falsely claimed it was a non-addictive pain solution. Doctors in the US began over-prescribing Oxy for pain problems it was never designed for. Today, 1 in 3 people knows someone addicted to Opioids.
Prescriptions peaked in 2010, but even today there are 3 times as many prescriptions as there were in 1999 despite the need for pain solutions staying relatively static. Today, the United States has 5% of the world’s population, but consumes 80% of the world’s pain pills.
It’s time to stop the Pain. drugfree.org
250 Million pain pills are produced each year, enough for every adult American to have 30 day supply. The estimated yearly gross revenue of all companies, manufacturers, and distributors of legally produced Opiates is 1.6 trillion dollars a year.
It is estimated by 2016’s President’s Commission that opiates have had a negative effect to the tune of $500 billion a year on the US government alone.
[disease, premature death, lost productivity, crime, unwanted and unplanned sex, substance abuse prevention efforts, law enforcement, homelessness, prosecution, incarceration, and probation]
Let’s do something to stop the pain. drugfree.org
Of patients that were prescribed opiates, Roughly 25% misuse, and approximately 10% become addicted. The cost of a prescription of Oxycontin is $10/pill. When prescriptions run out, a drug dealer will sell that same pill for a minimum of $30/pill. For people who have a 10 pill/day habit, that’s $300 a day.
When compared to Heroin’s $4-7$/bag, the same $300 habit falls to $100/day or lower. Heroin is unregulated, more potent, and gives a similar high. 80% of heroin users, say they first used prescription pain-killers.
Please stop the pain. drugfree.org
Fentanyl is a widely used medical opioid that is 100 times more potent than morphine. Misuse is on the rise. Due to how cheap it is to synthesize, it is now being laced into street drugs to improve their potency, and their deadliness.
2017 saw the first good news in the fight against Opioid misuse. For the first time in nearly 20 years the number of Opioid overdoses fell. Unfortunately, since 2015, the rolling count of fentanyl related deaths has increased every month. At the end of last year, the death count was over 36,000.
We must stop the pain. drugfree.org.
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