The Opioid Crisis: Fixing Existential Anxiety and Psychic Dizziness Using the Skater’s Cure

Abstract

Our current opioid crisis seems to be caused more by trying to fix a chronic pain in our hearts than chronic pains in our bodies. When things in the world reach a certain threshold of disorder for me, when the world feels chaotic, I can descend into a place in which I am constantly worried about what is around the next corner. This kind of anxiety is most often triggered by transitions --- by periods of rapid change. We have short-term emergency treatments that we use permanently since our strategies for long-term fixes are not doing what they need to do. What we must recognize is that if we want to either treat or prevent anxiety disorders we cannot do that by only focusing on the individual who is suffering any more than we would eradicate a disease spread by mosquitos by isolating those who got the disease. Anxiety disorders are most often disorders of connections. The fix requires that we understand how anxiety works and how it can become disordered. The fix we need has to do with how we manage change in a social setting.