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New data from around the U.S. confirms that drug overdoses are spiking during the coronavirus pandemic, rising by roughly 18%.

Reports collected in real time by the Washington, D.C.-based group ODMAP — the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program, located at the University of Baltimore — also found a significant spike in the number of fatal overdoses.

"Overdose clusters have shifted from traditional centralized urban locations to adjacent and surrounding suburban and rural areas," said ODMAP program manager Aliese Alter.

Drug deaths in America, which fell for the first time in 25 years in 2018, rose to record numbers in 2019 and are continuing to climb, a resurgence that is being complicated and perhaps worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, according to preliminary data recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — an increase of 5% from 2018.

It looks as if 2020 will be even worse. Drug deaths have risen an average of 13% so far this year over last year, according to mortality data from local and state governments collected by The New York Times, covering 40% of the U.S. population. If this trend continues for the rest of the year, it will be the sharpest increase in annual drug deaths since 2016.

HARTFORD — Connecticut is on pace to surpass last year’s number of overdose deaths, in part due to isolation resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, and advocates are calling for a shift from law enforcement to more outreach, and potentially facilities where addicts can use in a controlled environment.

The ANABASIS, the progressive rock collaborative of Barry Thompson (music) and George Andrade (words), announce that Jimmy Keegan will record drums for the band’s long-awaited sophomore release, The Battle – An Opioid Story, a rock opera written to benefit the Edwina Martin House in Brockton, MA.

In these unprecedented times it's very easy to be sucked down into the vortex of darkness that lurks within the human mind. When we are threatened with bodily harm or death there is a primal survival instinct, as ancient as the human species itself, that kicks in whether we realize it or not. Witness the irrational hoarding of toilet paper in the United States as a clear example of the mass psychosis brought on by life-altering events.