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Oxy Contin is some heavy shit they probably gave you Oxy Codone.
It's the same thing.
I work with men struggling with addiction, mental illness, eating disorders, etc. and in my experience, almost everyone with one or more of these issues has had traumatic events happen in their lives, and usually in childhood. We, as addicts (including myself), are trauma survivors. However, we addicts still need to claim responsibility for our actions, including all the lying/stealing/selfishness, etc. that happen in active addiction.
I could ramble but I wanted to say that I've been clean from drugs and alcohol for 2 and a half years. Luckily I've had the opportunity, resources, and support to get clean and stay clean, but I've also put in a lot of work. You have to stay up on your game, whether that means regularly going to meetings, meditating, taking psych medications, practicing your spirituality, or anything else, but community and connection with other humans is what I think is most important. Isolation can kill.
This is a uniquely Western and mostly American problem. I've traveled to a lot of places where it is super easy to get anything OTC, including morphine, and people have gone through far, far worse atrocities. Some people turn to alcohol and occasionally drugs, but even if they have money it is nowhere near as common.
And let's be honest this shit is only an epidemic in the States now because it's happening to middle class and/or white people. No one really cared when people in poor communities were shooting up as long as they weren't boosting cars and doing it in high value neighborhoods. Now that every Timmy that got sad when he was a kid is selling their Dad's Rolex for some Oxy's, wow, it's an "epidemic".
I'm not gonna say "trust me, I'm a doctor" because my thoughts are largely based from experience and observation and less on research, and you do have some points, but I think you might have misunderstood me. Mainly, I didn't claim that all victims or survivors of trauma become addicts, but that virtually every addict I've ever met has some sort of trauma in their background. Trauma is also a difficult word because the immediate image it conjures doesn't cover all the ways in which someone can be physically or emotionally hurt. And from what I was told by a therapist who actually has done his reading and research, the younger a person is, the less it takes to traumatize/emotionally disturb/whatever. For instance, just a mother not holding their baby enough can fuck up a baby's social and emotional development and disposition. Those ripples continue over time.
You're right though that people in other countries, specifically the third world or developing countries or whatever euphemism people are using nowadays, may have to face a lot more "atrocities" than many Americans. In the first world we have a lot higher standard of living. We don't really have war on our doorsteps, unless you're black or brown, being targeted by racist police or border patrol, or a woman, of which 1 in 4 will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime, or poor, possibly literally starving, or maybe developing PTSD from living in the hood (look that last one up). I don't know how to equate any of that to the experience of say someone who got gassed by their own government in Syria, but just because people have it worse, doesn't mean that SOME people still don't have it bad.
I also don't think that the opiate epidemic is only an epidemic or is only newsworthy because middle-class whites are dying. I concede that I don't know specifically about economic status, but from what I learned in sociology class, drug use is close to equal among all races. In fact, proportionally white people in the US tend to use more drugs than any other race. And in my mind, the term 'epidemic' refers to how thousands of people are dying of opiate overdoses now than they were 10 years ago. I thought that was pretty self-evident.
But I really don't know why addiction rates are so high in the U.S. and (I assume) lower most elsewhere. I've heard a big percentage of men in Afghanistan have an addiction to opiates. Suicide rates are higher in first world countries than third world countries though. I assume it has to do with the issue of connection and isolation. I don't see many strong, supportive families or kinship networks and communities around me.
Edit - Washington Post article said that the UK just created a Minister of Loneliness and so many people in Japan die alone in their apartments and aren't found for a long time that there's a word for it now, kodokushi.
TL;DR - Trauma doesn't always cause addiction but in my experience almost all addicts have trauma. White people use drugs more than anyone else in the U.S., and the opiate epidemic is real.