Drug & Alcohol Rehab For Tipton, Indiana

Tipton is a small city about an hour’s drive north of central Indianapolis. It serves as the seat of Tipton County and is the largest city by population in the county. The city is perhaps best known for its historical buildings and cultural events, including the annual Tipton County Pork Festival. Sadly, Tipton has struggled economically in recent years, and the population has stagnated at roughly 5,280 full-time residents.

The median household income in Tipton is $64,709, which falls about 10% short of the Indiana state median. Moreover, Tipton has a higher poverty rate of 18.1%, compared to 12.3% statewide. This means that nearly 1 in 5 Tipton residents lives at or below the poverty line. [1]

The economic difficulties have only worsened the ongoing substance abuse crisis in Tipton, Tipton County, and the surrounding area north of Indianapolis. Based on the most recent data, marijuana, meth, and alcohol are the most commonly abused substances in Tipton, Indiana. The city also sees the abuse of other addictive substances, such as prescription opioids, cocaine, and heroin.

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

Drug and Alcohol Addiction in Tipton

The standard protocol in Indiana is to put the responsibility for collecting and organizing substance abuse data on the shoulders of county-level administrators. This allows state departments to collect data from each county, rather than individual cities and municipalities, saving time and resources. This matters because Tipton County is no exception. It collects substance abuse data from all cities, towns, and municipalities within its borders. More importantly, like other counties in Indiana, Tipton County does not organize the data by city. Instead, it combines all of the available data. This makes it much more difficult to identify which cases originated from specific cities like Tipton.

However, in the case of Tipton, the city accounts for more than one-third of the county population. By some estimates, Tipton’s substance abuse cases might account for more than half of all substance abuse cases recorded in the county. Consequently, evaluating the county-level data provides a very accurate picture of the state of addiction and substance abuse in the city of Tipton.

Due to its small size, Tipton County (pop. 15,256) does not record a lot of deaths as a result of substance abuse. However, this is not because addiction is not a major problem in the area, it is just a reflection of the small population. Tipton County records similar overdose fatality numbers to other Indiana counties of similar size. Still, it’s extremely important to consider fatal overdoses first and foremost, as these are the most severe result of addiction and an important factor when evaluating the severity of a substance abuse crisis or epidemic.

The figures in Tipton County have varied over the last decade, with fatal overdoses generally increasing over the last few years. The table below shows how deaths involving all drugs (including alcohol) have changed in the county over the past few years. [2]

*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 Tipton County recorded 5 deaths in 2016, fatal overdoses decreased to zero the next year and never reached above three deaths per year from 2017 to 2021. This is somewhat unusual in Indiana, as many counties recorded a steady increase in fatal overdoses or even a sudden spike in fatal overdoses during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 and 2021). However, Tipton County’s spike occurred in 2022, when the county saw its worst year (6 fatal overdoses).

The data for 2023 and 2024 is still provisional. As of this writing, we only know that there have been more than zero and fewer than 5 fatal overdoses recorded for each of these years. We will need to wait and see what the final figures look like before drawing any firm conclusions.

In small populations like Tipton and Tipton County, it’s easier to study the number of non-fatal overdoses, as these are almost universally higher than fatal overdoses in every Indiana county. The higher numbers show more trends and provide more data with which to examine a constantly evolving situation. Additionally, non-fatal overdoses are often easier to calculate, as they are collected via hospital discharges and emergency department visits involving addictive substances. The table below shows the relevant overdose data in Tipton 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.

Like fatal overdoses in Tipton County, non-fatal overdoses have not followed a clear trajectory since 2016. They have spiked and declined, seemingly at random, though there has been a slight upward trend with the finalized data. Between 2016 and 2022, non-fatal overdoses increased by 14.2%. The data for 2023 only declined slightly from the previous year, and 2023’s data is not finalized. 2024’s data is not finalized either, but the sudden drop in non-fatal overdoses may indicate that they are in decline in Tipton County.

Aside from looking at fatal and non-fatal overdoses as two completely distinct aspects of substance abuse, it’s important to see how they correlate and to evaluate them in tandem with total overdoses. In 2016, Tipton County recorded 33 total overdoses (fatal plus non-fatal). 5 of these overdoses, or 15.15%, were fatal. By 2022 (the most recent year with finalized data), Tipton County had recorded 38 total overdoses. 6 of these overdoses, or 15.78%, were fatal. While total overdoses have seen a substantial increase since 2016 in Tipton County, the mortality rate has not increased substantially, which may indicate that local authorities are working effectively to reduce fatalities.

Types of Substance Abuse in Tipton

In 2023 and 2024, marijuana, meth, and alcohol were the most abused substances in Tipton County. Since the full data is not available for these years, we must also look at data for previous years. It’s also necessary to consider how this data is collected. Substance abuse trends are difficult to follow, but arrest and re-arrest records are often the best sources for identifying shifts in addictive and illicit substance abuse.

However, arrest and re-arrest records do not account for all substance abuse cases. Many people in Tifton County abuse drugs or alcohol without breaking the law, while others abuse these substances and evade arrest. As a result, our data does not account for all substance abuse cases — only a portion of them. Nonetheless, it still provides a broad overview of how different substances are abused in Tipton and the surrounding area.

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 Tipton County:

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

Though arrests saw a sudden upturn in 2024, they declined dramatically in Tipton County between 2016 and 2023. Over this same period, annual alcohol arrests dropped from 97 to 41, while cocaine and opioid arrests remained relatively low and unchanged. Meth arrests increased over this period, while marijuana arrests declined, though both figures remained much higher than arrests involving most other substances. Finally, drug paraphernalia arrests (which often involve meth or heroin abuse) were high up until the COVID-19 pandemic, at which time they began to decline.