You were excited that it looked like you were going to make in all of the way through Memorial Weekend without a trip to an urgent care clinic. Just as you thought that you had literally made it through the woods, however, your husband stumbled walking down the last part of the mountain trail and unfortunately landed in a patch of poison ivy. Luckily, he did not hurt himself, but the resulting poison ivy exposure proved problematic. So with just four hours left in the weekend at the mountain cabin, you found yourself rushing into the local urgent care center to get the treatment that he needed. The kids were thankful that this visit had nothing to do with them!

If Only All Health Problems Were Easily Solved with a Walk In Clinic Visit
As common as urgent care visits are in America, it should come as no surprise that a growing number of people know the location and hours of their closest walk in clinics. Unfortunately, the cases that are easily diagnosed and treated at a local urgent care center are not the only problems that Americans face. In addition to the normal illnesses and injuries that many people deal with on a regular basis, there are a growing number of families who are dealing with far bigger problems: alcohol and drug addictions. A MAy 29, 2018 article in The New York Times recently reported that one of the drug companies knew about the addictive qualities of one of their major products, in spite of the fact that they earlier claimed they did not.

Purdue Pharma, a company that planted the seeds of the opioid epidemic with aggressive marketing of OxyContin, has claimed for years that it was unaware of the powerful opioid painkiller’s growing abuse until years after it went on the market. A recently discovered copy of a Justice Department confidential report shows, however, that federal prosecutors investigating the company found that they were aware of and concealed information about the “significant” abuse of OxyContin in the first years after the drug’s introduction in 1996.
As the courts will likely sort out the implications of these recent findings, there are millions of Americans and their families are dealing with the immediate implications that these prescription drugs have been stolen, crushed, and resold in various formats. Far more addictive than other substance, opioid addiction is a growing health crisis in America.
Methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone are the three main types of active ingredients in FDA approved medications to treat opioid dependency, but they are expensive. Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the America, with 52,404 lethal drug overdoses in the year 2015 alone. Of these statistics, opioid addiction is driving the epidemic. In fact, in the year 2015 there were 20,101 overdose deaths related to prescription pain relievers, and 12,990 overdose deaths related to heroin in 2015. As the nation comes to terms with an increasing drug addiction problem in many large cities there will be many families who may find themselves longing for the days when their worst medical scare was exposure to poison ivy on a weekend hiking trip.