Drug & Alcohol Rehab For New Castle, Indiana

Located 44 miles east of central Indianapolis, New Castle is a small city situated along the Big Blue River. It’s home to various parks and points of interest, including the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame and the largest high school gymnasium in the country (and possibly the world). In its early days, New Castle was a prominent manufacturing town, but thanks to the fertile lands surrounding the city, including the Henry County Memorial Park to the north, the city diversified its economy. At one point, New Castle was home to more than 100 florists, making it one of the top resources for high-quality flowers in central Indiana.

Today, the economic outlook for New Castle is not as positive as it once was. New Castle functions as the seat of Henry County, with a population that has remained relatively consistent over the past few decades and currently rests at 17,396. However, the median household income is $48,977, which is far below the state median of $69,477. Additionally, poverty rates have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. As of the latest census data, 18.5% of New Castle’s population lives at or below the poverty line, compared to 12.3% statewide. [1]

The difficult economic situation has only exacerbated a growing problem in New Castle and the rest of Henry County: substance abuse. Hundreds of residents and families struggle with addiction in New Castle every single day, and the lack of city-based resources makes it even harder to get help.

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

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

Drug and Alcohol Addiction in New Castle

Like nearly every other city in Indiana, New Castle doesn’t collect or manage its own substance abuse data. Instead, law enforcement, emergency departments, and hospitals report data directly to the county, and the county aggregates data from all municipalities within its purview. As a result, the available data isn’t specific to New Castle; it represents all cities and towns in the area, including nearby towns like Mount Summit and Middletown.

That said, New Castle is the only incorporated city in the county and has the largest population of any municipality in the area by far. In fact, New Castle represents approximately 35.5% of the county population, and it’s estimated that more than half of all substance abuse cases recorded in the county originate in New Castle. Consequently, analyzing the county-level data provides a useful overview of the substance abuse crisis in New Castle.

When most people think of substance abuse data, they immediately think of overdose deaths. Fatal overdoses are an important factor to consider when evaluating substance abuse crises. In Henry County, they have grown over the years, peaking during the height 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.

While Henry County is not the smallest county in terms of population, it is far from the largest. Despite its modest population, the number of fatal overdoses recorded each year is quite high, especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data for 2023 and 2024 is still preliminary, but annual overdose deaths increased by 180% between 2016 and 2022. The county saw a sharp uptick in deaths in 2021, the worst year on record for overdose deaths in Henry County. However, fatal overdoses have declined slightly in the years since 2021, and 2024’s preliminary data could indicate that deaths will continue to decline even further.

While evaluating the changes in fatal overdoses is important, non-fatal overdoses provide a more accurate picture of substance abuse in a given area. Similar to fatal overdoses, non-fatal overdoses in Henry County are high, with numbers increasing most years. This data is collected via hospital discharges and emergency department visits involving addictive substances. The table below shows the relevant overdose data in Henry 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.

Excluding 2024 (because the data is incomplete), all but two of the years in the table above saw increases in the numbers of non-fatal overdoses from the year prior. Between 2016 and 2022 (the most recent year with finalized data), non-fatal overdoses increased by 22.2%. 2023 has also recorded some of the highest numbers seen thus far, but if the preliminary data for 2024 is anything to go on, non-fatal overdoses could begin to decline once again.

It’s also important to look at the relationship between fatal overdoses, non-fatal overdoses, and total overdoses (fatal plus non-fatal). For example, in 2016, there were a total of 113 overdoses on record in Henry County. Of those overdoses, just 5 (or 4.4%) were fatal. By 2022, there were a total of 146 overdoses on record, of which 14 (or 9.5%) were fatal). This shows that total overdoses are on the rise, and the percentage of fatal overdoses is increasing rapidly in Henry County.

Types of Substance Abuse in New Castle

In 2023 and 2024, alcohol and meth were the most abused drugs in Henry County. This information is a generalization based on arrest and re-arrest data in the area. It doesn’t reflect exact case counts, as many people abuse drugs and evade arrest or do not technically commit any crimes. At the same time, it does provide vital information for evaluating what types of substances are becoming more or less prevalent over time. 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 Henry County:

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

As you can see from the table above, arrests involving drugs or alcohol have decreased substantially in Henry County since 2016. The highest number of arrests was recorded in 2018, and they have decreased most years since then. It is important to note, however, that the provisional data for 2024 shows a sudden increase in arrests, with numbers that have not been seen since 2019.

Just as importantly, the types of abused substances have changed over time. Arrests involving nearly all of the drug types listed in the table above, as well as drug paraphernalia, declined between 2016 and 2022. Cocaine is one of the only drugs that saw no clear pattern over this time period. Despite the decline in total arrests, alcohol and marijuana remain the most abused substances in the county based on arrest records alone.