Drug & Alcohol Rehab For Salem, Indiana

Known for its annual historical festivals, the Carnegie Library, as well as various museums and art exhibits, Salem is a small city that lies about 45 minutes northwest of Louisville, Kentucky. Despite having a population of just 6,437, Salem serves as the seat of Washington County and makes up the majority of Washington Township — not to be confused with the Washington Township in Indianapolis.

Despite its “Mainstreet USA” aesthetic and various historical buildings and monuments, the city of Salem has struggled in recent years. The population has been in a very slow but steady decline over the past three decades, in large part due to a lack of new job opportunities. While there are small manufacturing and retail sectors in the city, it has largely been a micro-economy that has depended on local agriculture. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was a major setback for nearly every industry, and the city’s economy contracted rapidly.

As of the latest census, the median household income in Salem, Indiana is $51,786. This is nearly $20,000 lower than the state median across all of Indiana. To make matters worse, Salem has one of the highest poverty rates in the state. While Indiana’s poverty rate rests at 12.3%, Salem’s poverty rate is 26.0% — that means that more than 1 out of every 4 Salem residents lives below the poverty line. [1]

These difficult times have only exacerbated another growing problem in Salem and the rest of Washington County: substance abuse. The region sees hundreds of lives lost to addiction every year, and there are very few local resources to help.

Based on the most recent data, meth is the most commonly abused substance in Salem, Indiana. The city also sees the abuse of other substances, such as alcohol, marijuana, prescription opioids, cocaine, and heroin.

Continue reading to learn about substance abuse and addiction in Salem, Indiana. And remember, if you or a loved one are fighting addiction in Salem or the surrounding area, you can always reach out to Addiction Rehab Centers for help.

Drug and Alcohol Addiction in Salem

Salem is a very small city that lacks the resources to combat substance abuse on its own. Even the collection and evaluation of substance abuse data takes additional resources that the city simply cannot afford. Fortunately, it is common practice for counties to collect and aggregate substance abuse cases from cities, towns, townships, and other municipalities within their borders in Indiana. While this makes it easier for state officials to evaluate substance abuse in different areas of Indiana and craft legislation to combat it, combining data from different cities within a single county makes it more difficult to identify cases from each municipality. For example, substance abuse cases including arrests, overdoses, and fatalities originating in Salem are combined (at the county level) with cases originating in nearby towns like Campbellsburg and New Pekin.

However, Salem makes up about 22.8% of the county population, and county administrators estimate that as much as 40% of substance abuse cases recorded in Washington County originate in Salem, Indiana. Consequently, evaluating the county-level data provides a relatively clear and accurate picture of the substance abuse crisis in Salem alone.

Fatal overdoses are among the first factors we consider when evaluating the state of substance abuse in a given city or county. Considering the relatively small size of both Salem and Washington County, the number of deaths caused by addictive substances is surprisingly high, particularly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. [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 and 2024 is provisional and may be subject to change. The last date that data was collected was 09/04/2024.

Fatal overdoses have increased dramatically in Washington County since 2016. Between 2019 and 2020, annual overdose deaths more than doubled and remained high through 2021 and 2022. While the data for 2023 and 2024 is still provisional, it may indicate that the high death counts recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic have subsided. However, it is too early to conclude that fatal overdoses are in decline for certain. Even if they have declined in the last two years, between 2016 and 2022 (the most recent year with finalized data), fatal overdoses increased by 250% in Washington County.

The high death counts in Washington County are a sign that substance abuse is a serious issue in the region. However, non-fatal overdoses are far more common, and often provide a more accurate overview of a substance abuse crisis. This data is collected via hospital discharges and emergency department visits involving addictive substances. The table below shows the relevant overdose data in Washington County between 2016 and 2024: [3]

*Data for 2023 and 2024 is provisional and may be subject to change. The last date that data was collected was 09/04/2024.

The data for non-fatal overdoses in Washington County offers a much different picture of the substance abuse crisis, particularly when compared to fatal overdoses. When looking just at the non-fatal overdoses between 2016 and 2022, they only declined by a small margin (7.7%). However, the county saw years with surprisingly high overdose numbers, namely 2017 (110 non-fatal overdoses), 2020 (97 non-fatal overdoses), and 2021 (85 non-fatal overdoses). Once again, the provisional data for 2023 and 2024 may indicate that substance abuse is in decline, but it’s too early to know for sure.

It’s also important to compare fatal, non-fatal, and total overdoses to see how the three data points correspond over time. For example, in 2016 there were a total of 81 overdoses in Washington County. Only 4 of those overdoses (4.9%) were fatal. By 2022, there were a total of 85 overdoses in the county. An alarming 14 of those overdoses (16.4%) were fatal. This drastic increase in fatal overdoses could be attributed to a wide range of causes, including easier access to powerful opioids like fentanyl, a lack of resources to help local residents find treatment, a lack of emergency medical response programs in Washington County, a combination of all three, or something else altogether.

Types of Substance Abuse in Salem

In 2023 and 2024, meth was the most abused drug in Washington County. While alcohol is the most abused substance in most counties in Indiana, southern Indiana has a growing problem with the abuse of crystal meth. Sadly, this issue has spread to Washington County and has only worsened over time. And while arrest and re-arrest data does not completely demonstrate the abuse of different substances (it excludes those who abuse drugs and alcohol without committing crimes and those who evade arrest), it does show how drug trends shift over time in the 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 2024 in Washington County:

*Statistics for 2023 and 2024 are still preliminary and do not account for the entire calendar year(s).

Arrests involving addictive substances peaked at 401 in 2018 and have since declined. However, since 2017, Washington County has not seen a single year with less than 200 arrests, including the years with provisional data (2023 and 2024). Between 2016 and 2022, alcohol arrests declined, while both cocaine and prescription opioid arrests remained relatively low. However, both meth and marijuana arrests increased substantially over the same period. Drug paraphernalia arrests also increased, and these arrests are often associated with heroin and meth abuse.