Since the pandemic, overdose deaths are continuing to decline in Michigan. The number is dropping quickly in Metro Detroit. 

There are a lot of possible explanations for the decline. Narcan is more readily available, the state has turned toward a harm-reduction approach, and the pandemic, when people were cooped up inside, is further in the rearview mirror. 

Peer recovery coaches are also a big reason for the reduction. That work received significantly more money from the state in recent years.

What does it look like to create intimacy with someone struggling with addiction, and to help them recover?

Pepper Catt is a peer recovery coach with the Alliance of Coalitions for Healthy Communities. That’s a Troy nonprofit. She spoke about all this with The Metro’s Sam Corey. 

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Five years ago drug overdoses were killing more than 3,000 people a year in Michigan. It was the worst the state had seen. Behind that number were parents, sons and daughters — people who’d been trying to get well for years.

That number is coming down. By the state’s early count, last year had the fewest overdose deaths in more than a decade.

But the people who do this work are cautious about it. Fewer deaths may not mean fewer people in danger. 

Addiction touches lives in different ways. For many of us, it might be indirectly. One analysis put the cost to Michigan last year at $38 billion: lost work, lost wages, courts, treatment. 

Now there’s money to fight this—millions from the settlement with the maker of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma. Detroit gets a share, and it’s deciding how to spend it now.

Ali Abazeed leads Detroit’s health department, and founded Dearborn’s before that. He spoke to The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent about what the city is doing to reduce overdose deaths and help residents be healthier.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on demand.

Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

More stories from The Metro