FEATURE By Aviva Fohrer, MD, Thalia Medical Center Understanding Substance Use Disorders D by Aviva Fohrer, MD Thalia Medical Center rugs. Heroin. Addiction. Overdose. Death. These are words that most of us cannot imagine thinking or uttering yet approximately 64,000 deaths in the United States due to opiate overdoses occurred in 2016. This is a 22% increase from previous years. The sharpest increase occurred among fentanyl and fentanyl analog deaths. Listen to the news or open a newspaper and you will hear about the opiate epidemic sweeping throughout our nation. 24 DELAWARE COUNTY MEDICINE & HEALTH winter 2017