The number of people dying from unintentional drug and alcohol overdoses in the far west of New South Wales has increased, according to a report from not-for-profit drug and alcohol research centre, the Penington Institute.
The Annual Overdose Report, released today, showed the number of fatal overdoses across the region almost tripled in the five-year period to 2018, compared with the previous period.
Seventeen people died as the result of an overdose across the far west between 2014 and 2018.
In the five years prior, six people died because of a substance overdose.
"That's an unacceptably high number, and it's 17 too many," Penington Institute CEO John Ryan said.
Overdose death rate worse in regional areas
The report found the rate of unintentional overdose deaths was higher in regional NSW compared with Greater Sydney every year since 2010.
"People in regional and rural areas, per head, are more likely to die from overdose than people in the city," Mr Ryan said.
Mr Ryan said a combination of illicit drugs, alcohol and legal pharmaceutical drugs like pain killers and anti-anxiety sleeping contributed to the overdose toll.
Andrew House, who works for the Royal Flying Doctor Service as a drug and alcohol clinician across far-western NSW, said unfortunately, the statistics were not surprising.
"There's a very fine line between safe levels of use and then overdosing on the drug," he said.
"It's difficult for people to even recognise what overdose is … [it's] not necessarily dying from the overdose — you're overdosing on alcohol if you're slurring your speech [or] if you can't find your balance," Mr House said.
Reducing stigma key to tackling 'crisis'
Mr House said the issue was not a lack of services in rural and remote areas, but rather the stigma attached to seeking help.
"If you're going out a couple of nights a week and you've got a couple of mates that seem to always get over-intoxicated and seem to get into trouble, there's some warning signs there," he said.
"If you have a thought that 'maybe there's a problem', honour that thought and go and talk to someone … there's a strength in reaching out for help and if people get on board with that it'll make it a lot easier."
Mr Ryan said unintentional overdose deaths were Australia's "hidden health crisis" and the first step toward reducing worsening statistics was to treat addiction as a complex health problem rather than a taboo topic.
"Real-time prescription monitoring, some people think is a silver bullet, it's absolutely not. We need to think beyond a technological fix and beyond a supply control fix," he said.
"There's a lot of stigma around drug-use issues and a terrible amount of stigma around an overdose death and we need to actually get over that.
"We've done it in relation to mental health — we can talk about mental health issues openly now, but we certainly can't talk about overdose issues openly."
