We keep hearing about Prince in the news. Sadly, it’s not for his music. We’ve also talked about him in these blogs. Again, it wasn’t because of his music.
As you’ve probably heard, Prince died in April, 2016 from an overdose of fentanyl. Fentanyl is an opioid, a painkilling drug related to opium. Other drugs in the opioid include heroin and morphine. We keep on hearing about the heroin epidemic and it’s bad. Heroin is destroying lives and killing people.
But did you know that fentanyl is even worse? It’s fifty to 100 times more powerful than heroin. Drug dealers sometimes add fentanyl to heroin. The problem is that people might take a lot of the drugs they purchase, thinking that the drugs are heroin. But because fentanyl is more powerful than heroin, they might have a greater tendency to overdose.
We’re still trying to determine what exactly happened to Prince. It appears that he was taking painkillers due to injuries he sustained from years of his high-energy performances. Prince knew he was taking painkillers, but did he know he was taking fentanyl? If he did know he was taking fentanyl, did he know what it could do?
It appears that he might have known something wasn’t quite right. Prince apparently met with doctors before he died. He was scheduled to meet with doctors specializing in addiction the day after he died. It seems that Prince apparently knew something was wrong.
If only Prince could have met with those doctors. While addiction specialists don’t know everything about addiction, they’re learning more every day. They could’ve helped Prince, just as such doctors have helped people end their addictions to fentanyl and other substances.
Prince’s death illustrates the deadly nature of drug abuse. It demonstrates that even the rich and famous battle with addictions to opioids and other drugs and might need medical attention to address them.
