We are missing the boat on the opiate overdose epidemic.

We are missing the boat on the opiate overdose epidemic. It is both a crisis of meaning and an epidemic. By medicalizing despair, we are obscuring its real cause, which is the technology-driven obsolescence of work and progressive income inequality, itself technology enabled. If we want to stop the opiate epidemic,  we will need to bring life back to our communities by investing in them and making sure people have the time to live meaningful lives in them.