Drug & Alcohol Rehab For South Bend, Indiana

South Bend, Indiana is a mid-sized city at the state’s northern border with Michigan. It serves as the county seat of St. Joseph County and is bordered to the south by the St. Joseph River. For decades, South Bend was a small but powerful industrial town, and various manufacturing corporations have called it home at one point or another. However, in recent years, manufacturing and large commercial projects have generally declined. Nonetheless, the city still gets a fair amount of tourism and is known nationwide as the home of Notre Dame University.

The city has a population of 103,110, making it the 4th-largest city in Indiana by population. It also accounts for roughly 38% of the county, but a stunted local economy has led to a stagnating population in recent years. Despite its size compared to most other cities in the state, South Bend struggles with high poverty rates and relatively low household incomes.

As of the latest data, the median household in South Bend makes $49,056 per year, compared to $61,877 in St. Joseph County and $67,173 in all of Indiana. To make the situation worse, about 22.5% of the local population lives at or below the poverty line, compared to 13.2% in St. Joseph County and 12.6% statewide. [1]

The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic anxiety has led to higher instances of substance abuse in South Bend. Alcohol and meth are among the most abused drugs in the region, though South Bend and the rest of St. Joseph County also struggle with the abuse of cocaine, prescription opioids, marijuana, and heroin.

Continue reading to learn about substance abuse and addiction in South Bend, Indiana. If you or a loved one are fighting addiction in South Bend, you can always reach out to Addiction Rehab Centers for help.

Drug and Alcohol Addiction in South Bend

When it comes to substance abuse cases, South Bend relies on data collected at the county level. This means that the data collected includes South Bend and many other cities in St. Joseph County, like Mishawaka and Granger. However, South Bend is still the largest city in the county by far, and it contributes far more substance abuse cases than any other city in the area.

Based on death records in St. Joseph County, drug and alcohol abuse spiked during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are some signs that substance abuse cases could be in decline. [2] The table below shows how deaths involving all drugs (including alcohol) have changed in the area over the past few years:

*Data for 2023 is provisional and only accounts for the first quarter of the year.

This data shows that the number of deaths varied from year to year leading up to 2020. In the first year of the pandemic, St. Joseph County saw a major spike in substance abuse deaths, and this figure remained high throughout 2021 and 2022. While the data for 2023 is still provisional, the low figure may be an indication that things are slowing down. However, when looking at the data in aggregate, between 2016 and 2022, the number of annual deaths increased by 55%.

In addition to overdose deaths, it’s also important to consider the people who required emergency overdose treatment and were discharged from a hospital in the area. The table below shows the hospital discharges involving drug overdoses in St. Joseph County between 2016 and 2023: [3]

*Data for 2023 is provisional and only accounts for the first quarter of the year.

Despite seeing an increase in overdose hospital charges between 2016 and 2021, the numbers have since declined. It’s important to remember that the numbers for 2023 are still provisional, but they could indicate that overdose cases and deaths are both in decline.

Types of Substance Abuse in South Bend

As of 2023, alcohol and meth are the two most commonly abused substances in South Bend and St. Joseph County. Here is the latest data from Indiana’s Next Level Recovery program showing the arrests involving different kinds of addictive substances between 2016 and 2023 in St. Joseph County:

*Statistics for 2023 are still preliminary and do not account for the entire calendar year.

As you can see from the table above, total arrests increased by about 10.6% between 2016 and 2023 (even though 2023’s data is still provisional). Over the same period, alcohol, marijuana, and opioid arrests declined by 45%, 24.9%, and 42.5%, respectively. Meth arrests have seen the most dramatic change, increasing by 228.8% over a 6-year period. Drug paraphernalia arrests have varied a lot from year to year with no clear trend to analyze, but it should be noted that, regardless of the number, these arrests are often linked to meth and heroin abuse.

Lastly, it’s important to take notice of cocaine abuse in St. Joseph County. In most major cities, cocaine is abused to some degree, but it is not one of the most commonly abused drugs. St. Joseph County is a rare exception. Since South Bend is home to a major university, there’s a chance that many of the cocaine arrests are associated with the “party culture” present on some college campuses. While this is only conjecture, it would explain why cocaine arrests are so much more common in St. Joseph County than they are in similarly-sized counties throughout Indiana. While cocaine abuse does appear to be far more common in the area, this still figure declined by 51.9% between 2016 and 2023.