Some view college as an acceptable time to learn about yourself and experiment with your environment (yes, I’m talking about drugs). However, it might be important to consider how your personal experiments or habits effect your health during the COVID-19 pandemic. We all know washing your hands, wearing a mask, and social distancing can help to reduce your chance of contracting COVID-19, but with potential asymptomatic carriers on a campus of nearly 50,000 people, COVID-19 is tough to evade.
If you have done your research and have made the personal decision to try certain substances or if you suffer from addiction, we need to discuss the adverse health effects drug use may induce and how that relates to the current pandemic. Some of these adverse health effects may result in predisposing conditions, which make people more susceptible to things like COVID-19 and is therefore typically associated with severe cases. Predisposing conditions are things like cancer, COPD, heart conditions, type I and II diabetes, asthma, hypertension, liver disease, and immunocompromised individuals (Certain Medical Conditions and Risk for Severe COVID-19 Illness 2020). Please note, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that it is inconclusive if drug use is associated with higher occurrence of COVID-19, but I believe this information may be a beneficial perspective to students on our campus when making individualized and informed decisions on drug use (People Who Use Drugs or Have Substance Use Disorder 2020). Opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine, heroin, and fentanyl are known to interfere with our breathing mechanism. Even without COVID-19, this can result in slow and ineffective breathing leading to decreased oxygen in the blood, which can result in brain damage. Stimulants like cocaine, methamphetamine, and ketamine are associated with stroke, heart attacks, abnormal heart rhythm, seizures, and can cause long term heart and lung damage. Smoking raises your risk of infection, can cause COPD, hypertension, asthma, and other lung conditions. With smoking, it is also important to be aware that sharing inhaled products like vapes, glassware, cigarettes, and joints/blunts can result in transmission of COVID-19. Furthermore, diseases like HIV and hepatitis are common among intravenous drug users and prevent the immune system from fighting off infection to its fullest potential (People Who Use Drugs or Have Substance Use Disorder 2020).
For each example above, it is clear that side effects from these substances might not allow your body to defend itself to its fullest potential. A definitive relationship between drug use and severe COVID-19 cases is unclear at the moment, but studies have already begun and as the pandemic continues to unravel, more evidence will be uncovered. As a fellow OSU student, I hope this information helps you to better navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and empowers you to be well!
If you or someone you know is suffering from addiction, please refer to resources below for help:
- https://swc.osu.edu/services/collegiate-recovery-community/
- https://swc.osu.edu/services/alcohol-tobacco-and-other-drug-prevention/
- https://swc.osu.edu/services/sexual-health/hiv-sti-testing/
- https://swc.osu.edu/services/buckeye-peer-access-line/
- Certain Medical Conditions and Risk for Severe COVID-19 Illness. (2020, September 11). Retrieved September 12, 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html
- People Who Use Drugs or Have Substance Use Disorder. (2020, July 7). Retrieved September 12, 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/other-at-risk-populations/people-who-use-drugs/QA.html
-Rachel Ernst