Drugs are killing aging baby boomers in Arizona at unprecedented rates, a trend that experts attribute to increases in both prescription- and illegal-drug use.

The problem has been mounting here and nationwide for years but has been largely overlooked by drug-abuse prevention officials, who were not focused on adult-age subgroups.

"Drug addiction is so often talked about as a disease of our youth, but for so many people, it catches up with them when they age," said Dr. Marvin Seppala, a national expert on drug abuse and chief medical director at Hazelden, a substance-abuse treatment program in Minnesota. advertisement 


Over the past decade, the per capita rate for fatal, accidental poisoning by drugs and alcohol among Arizonans ages 45 to 64 has multiplied, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. The number of deaths rose to 250 in 2005 from 39 in 1995.

Boomers, now ages 42 to 60, are particularly susceptible to drug abuse in middle age and beyond. Some glorified and took up drugs during the Vietnam era, graduating to barbiturates and heroin and fighting addiction off and on. Others turned later to prescription drugs and got caught up in their growing potency. Never fading was the easy access of alcohol.

Valley resident Judie Brokke's daughter, Carol, a young boomer, died in 2003 at age 42 after first abusing prescription painkillers, then illegal drugs.

"Everyone in this family was trying to help her," Judie said. "She had everything going for her. She had been a legal secretary."

Seppala, a recovering drug addict and boomer, saw a dramatic change in the drug culture when the pain reliever OxyContin hit the market in 1995.

"There had been a huge shift in medical care that we hadn't been adequately treating pain," he said. But when doctors started prescribing the new drug, which is as potent as morphine, emergency rooms across the country saw the number of overdoses due to opioids double by 2000.

"Whenever a powerful addicting medication is released, more addictions will occur," Seppala said.

In the Phoenix area, the majority of drug-abuse deaths are tied to opiates, followed by cocaine, alcohol, stimulants and benzodiazepines, according to the federal Drug Abuse Warning Network.

Many drugs also are more powerful than the most popular ones in the 1960s.

"Meth is a killer, and so is heroin," said Sally Lara, executive director of the Phoenix chapter of the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence. 

She said she isn't surprised more boomers are dying of drug abuse. "They don't believe they (the drugs) are so powerful. It gives them a really rapid heartbeat, and if they have cardiac arrest, they can die."

Drug abuse seems to be following boomers through the decades. 

The age at which most drug-overdose deaths occurred in 1970 was 22. In 1980, it was 31, and in 1990 it was 37. By 1995, 43 was the most frequent age of drug deaths. In Arizona last year, the peak age range was the late 40s.

Mike Males, who teaches sociology at the University of California-Santa Cruz and studies national drug trends, said fatal drug use among boomers has not been studied closely, partly because law enforcement is the focus.

Barbara Nicholson-Brown, 54, of Scottsdale, came close to being a drug-overdose statistic but turned her life around 16 years ago while living in New York City. Suicide seemed the only way out for the woman who had found success and money in the advertising world but was bottoming out from drugs and alcohol.

There were blackouts from drinking; crazy days of cocaine and heroin. Death seemed so easy, she said.

"I was so ready. It was almost like I was standing on top of the Empire State Building and I had one foot on and one foot off."

She was hung over the day she went to her first 12-step meeting. 

But something clicked, and she began a new life. Today, Nicholson-Brown publishes Arizona Together, a recovery newspaper, and is the founder of the Art of Recovery Expo.

The next expo, which brings in about 100 people involved in the drug-treatment field, will be held Sept. 16 at the Phoenix Convention Center.

Many baby boomers are fooling themselves into thinking they can handle their drugs or they may have given up hope and continue to use, Nicholson-Brown said.

"People think they're flawed, that there's something missing," she said. 

"Addiction is so intertwined with mind, body and spirit. I felt I was no better than the person on the street."