Drug & Alcohol Rehab For Tell City, Indiana

Tell City is a small municipality located along the Ohio River, just at the border between Indiana and Kentucky. Originally founded by Swiss-German settlers as a community exclusively for tradesmen and their families, the city quickly grew and developed a culture centered around its Swiss routes, with the city name coming from the fictional folk hero of Switzerland, William Tell. The city serves as the seat of Perry County and has historically been an important trading port on the Ohio River.

As of the latest census, Tell City boasts a population of 7,485. Residents enjoy a relatively low cost of living compared to larger cities in southern Indiana, particularly Evansville to the west. However, economic hardship fell on Tell City during and after the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic. The small city has since struggled to recover. Currently, the median household income in Tell City is $50,702, which is about 28.5% lower than Indiana’s median household income. Moreover, Tell City has a poverty rate of 19.3% (nearly 1 in 5 citizens live below the poverty line), compared to 12.3% statewide. [1]

While high poverty rates do not always lead to substance abuse, there is a correlation between the two. Consequently, many residents of Tell City have struggled with drug and alcohol abuse in recent years. Based on the most recent data, meth is the most commonly abused substance in Tell City, 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 Tell City, Indiana. And remember, if you or a loved one are fighting addiction in Tell City or the surrounding area, you can always reach out to Addiction Rehab Centers for help.

Drug and Alcohol Addiction in Tell City

Tell City follows in the footsteps of most other cities in Indiana insofar as it depends on the county to collect and aggregate its substance abuse data. Perry County collects data from Tell City and combines it with other nearby municipalities within its purview, including towns and cities like Troy and Cannelton. This can make it a little more difficult to identify substance abuse cases that specifically originate in Tell City.

However, Tell City is the largest incorporated city in Perry County by a wide margin. Tell City accounts for 39% of the county population. To put that in perspective, the next largest city (Cannelton) only accounts for 7.9% of the county population. This means that using Perry County’s data still provides an accurate picture of the current substance abuse crisis in Tell City, especially since many local experts estimate that at least half of all cases recorded at the county level originate in Tell City.

Overdose deaths are one of the most important factors to consider in a substance abuse crisis. Fatal overdoses measure the severity of substance abuse in terms of lives lost, which can also shed light on the types and amounts of substances being abused. Fortunately, Perry County has recorded a small number of substance abuse deaths since 2016, but this is largely due to its sparse population compared to other counties in the state. [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.

As you can see from the table above, Perry County has never even come close to hitting double-digit overdose deaths in any year since 2016. This means that, in combination with the small population, the county has worked very hard to reduce fatalities. However, the lack of data also means that it’s nearly impossible to extract any kind of trend from the county’s numbers.

Fatal overdoses hit their peak in 2017 at just 5 deaths, before recording two consecutive years with zero fatal overdoses. Like many counties in Indiana, Perry County saw an uptick in fatal overdoses during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but deaths were still remarkably low compared to most other counties. It’s important to note that the data for 2023 and 2024 is still provisional, so it remains to be seen if the fatal overdose data will change substantially as more information becomes available.

In small population areas like Tell City and Perry County, it’s generally more useful to look at non-fatal overdoses, as these are far more common than fatal overdoses. It also allows us to compare the relationship between fatal, non-fatal, and total overdoses to see how they correlate and how all three statistics have shifted over the years. This data is collected via hospital discharges and emergency department visits involving addictive substances. The table below shows the relevant overdose data in Perry 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.

Much like fatal overdoses in Perry County, non-fatal overdoses have varied from one year to the next. If we only examine the change between 2016 and 2022 (the latest year with finalized data), it would appear that non-fatal overdoses decreased by 17.2%. However, 2017 saw the highest number of non-fatal overdoses at 28, while 2019 saw the lowest at 16. Surprisingly, the provisional data for 2023 shows a sharp increase in non-fatal overdoses, though we will have to wait until this information is finalized to confirm the increase from 2022. Additionally, it’s far too early to know what non-fatal overdoses will look like for the entirety of 2024.

What we can do with this data is compare it to the fatal overdoses and total overdoses. For example, in 2016, there were a total of 33 overdoses in Perry County. Just 4 (or 12.12%) of those overdoses were fatal. By 2022, there were a total of 26 overdoses. Only 2 (or 7.6%) of those overdoses were fatal. While deaths and overdoses have shifted drastically from year to year, this does show a long-term decline in fatalities caused by addictive substances in Perry County — even though one must remember that we’re working with a small data set.

Types of Substance Abuse in Tell City

In 2023 and 2024, meth was the most abused drug in Perry County. This is slightly unusual for a county in Indiana, where alcohol is the most abused substance in the majority of counties. In any case, 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 Perry County:

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

With the exception of 2016 when there were just 38 arrests on record involving addictive substances, total substance abuse arrests have decreased in recent years. Between 2017 and 2022, arrests declined by 162%. Over the same period, cocaine and prescription opioid arrests remained low, while alcohol and marijuana arrests varied from year to year. Meth arrests remained consistently high, though they did decline along with the total number of arrests. Drug paraphernalia arrests were also relatively high, and these are most often associated with meth or heroin abuse.