Drug & Alcohol Rehab For Spencer, Indiana

The town of Spencer, Indiana, is located at the intersection of Interstate 231 and State Road 46. It is bordered to the south and east by the White River, and to the northeast by McCormick’s Creek State Park. Though it has a population of just 2,500, Spencer serves as the seat of Owen County. The median household income in Owen County is $70,890, which is close to the state median. However, the county boasts a poverty rate of just 6.6%, compared to 12.3% statewide. [1]

While Owen County enjoys a prosperous economy and Spencer is the largest town by population in the county, Spencer has struggled since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wages have stagnated, and the poverty rate has increased to 9.5% in Spencer alone. Economic stagnation has only worsened the ongoing substance abuse crisis in Spencer and the surrounding area.

Based on the most recent data, meth and marijuana are the most commonly abused substances in Spencer, Indiana. The town also sees the abuse of other addictive substances, such as alcohol, prescription opioids, cocaine, and heroin.

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

Drug and Alcohol Addiction in Spencer

As a small town, Spencer does not collect its own substance abuse data. This is not specific to Spencer, as Indiana has a data collection system that puts the responsibility on counties to collect and aggregate data related to substance abuse cases within their borders. This means that the overdoses, arrests, and fatalities recorded in Spencer are combined with those collected from other towns and unincorporated communities in Owen County.

However, Spencer is the largest of just two towns in the county. Gosport (pop. 826) is the second town, but its size is dwarfed by Spencer’s population of 2,500. Spencer accounts for roughly 11.7% of Owen County’s 21,321 residents. While this is somewhat small, the available data indicates that Spencer contributes a much larger percentage of substance abuse cases than other municipalities in the area.

By some estimates, Spencer accounts for nearly 40% of all substance abuse cases recorded in Owen County. This makes it easier to evaluate the ongoing substance abuse crisis in the town of Spencer by examining the county-level data.

Overdose fatalities are often where research begins, though in a low-population municipality like Spencer, fatalities tend to be infrequent. As a result, overdose fatalities must be combined with other metrics to determine the severity of the substance abuse crisis. However, in Owen County, fatalities have increased in recent years, with deaths remaining high since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The table below shows how deaths involving all drugs (including alcohol) have changed in the county over the past few years. [2]

*Data for 2024 is provisional and may be subject to change. The last date that data was collected was 05/21/2025.

While 2018 saw a sudden drop in overdose fatalities, the data shows a clear upward trend in deaths since 2016. The number of fatalities is low compared to other counties of the same size, but there has still been a noticeable rise in overdose fatalities in Owen County. This increase has remained consistent since 2019. Between 2016 and 2023, overdose fatalities increased by 133.3%. However, the provisional data for 2024 indicates that fewer than 5 fatal overdoses have been recorded. This may signal that the upward trend in fatalities is slowing or even reversing direction, but we will have to wait for the data to be finalized before we draw any firm conclusions.

Non-fatal overdoses are a much better indication of the severity of a substance abuse crisis, as they tend to be far more common in most populations. There are roughly 50 non-fatal overdoses for every 1 fatal overdose, according to national data from the CDC. [3] Spencer and the rest of Owen County have also shown a large difference in the figures for fatal and non-fatal overdoses.

It’s also important to note that non-fatal overdose data is usually more accurate than the data for fatal overdoses. This is because some fatal overdoses may not be properly recorded until months or years after the death occurred. Non-fatal overdoses, on the other hand, are diligently recorded via hospital discharges and emergency department visits involving addictive substances. The table below shows the relevant overdose data in Owen County between 2016 and 2024: [4]

*Data for 2024 is provisional and may be subject to change. The last date that data was collected was 05/21/2025.

The data for non-fatal overdoses in Owen County remains surprisingly consistent, with all but one year recording between 38 and 49 non-fatal overdoses. Non-fatal overdoses reached their peak of 49 in 2021 and 2022, and saw a drastic decline to just 26 non-fatal overdoses in 2023. However, the provisional data shows a return to the “norm” in Owen County with 45 non-fatal overdoses. Once again, though, the data for 2024 could be adjusted in the near future.

None of these statistics exists in a vacuum, and it’s vitally important to examine the correlation between fatal, non-fatal, and total (fatal + non-fatal) overdoses. In 2016, Owen County recorded 46 total overdoses, 3 of which were fatal (6.5%) and 43 were non-fatal (93.5%). In 2020, Owen County recorded 49 total overdoses, 6 of which were fatal (12.2%) and 43 non-fatal (87.8%). In 2023, the most recent year with finalized data, Owen County recorded 33 total overdoses, 7 of which were fatal (21.2%) and 26 of which were non-fatal (78.8%).

However, 2023 was an anomaly in Owen County’s data, as it was the only year to see a drastic decline in non-fatal overdoses. The provisional data for 2024 shows a fatality rate that’s closer to previous years. In any case, there has been a steady increase in the fatality rate, indicating that, even though non-fatal overdoses are remaining consistent, a greater percentage of people abusing addictive substances are succumbing to their addictions.

Types of Substance Abuse in Spencer

In 2023 and 2024, meth and marijuana were the most abused substances in Spencer and the rest of Owen County. This is pretty common for southern Indiana, which has seen an increase in meth addiction over the past decade. Alcohol and marijuana are also widely abused statewide.

We have determined these trends using arrest and re-arrest data provided by the county. However, arrest data is not a perfect science when it comes to addiction. Many cases of substance abuse go unrecorded because no crime was committed or no arrest was recorded. That said, seeing the changes in substance type based on arrest and re-arrest data does provide a broad picture of how substance abuse has evolved over time based on the prevalence of each substance type.

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 Owen County:

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

As you can see from the table, the total number of arrests has varied over the years, with a three-year peak during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2016, alcohol arrests declined sharply, from 83 in 2016 to just 22 in 2023 — a decline of 73.4%. Both cocaine and prescription opioid arrests are relatively uncommon in Owen County, while meth and marijuana arrests have both remained consistently high.

Meth arrests, in particular, were very high during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 through 2022), though they have since declined. Drug paraphernalia arrests have varied from year to year, and these arrests are most often linked to meth or heroin abuse. The provisional data for 2024 shows an increase in alcohol, marijuana, and meth arrests from the finalized numbers of 2023.