The opioid crisis in Poland? Insights from online forum data

Abstract

Background

In recent years, Polish media have raised alarms about the growing opioid threat. However, the latest research challenges these concerns, indicating a lack of factual evidence about the rise in the treatment and consumption of opioids. The present research contributes to this debate by analyzing online discussion trends on the Hyperreal—the most significant Polish forum for debating psychoactive substances. The aim is to verify whether online user discussions reflect—or contradict—concerns about an emerging opioid crisis in Poland, and how such discussions may complement other forms of data.

Methods

The study is based on 1,174,816 Hyperreal posts from its start in 2005 to 2023, of which 208,768 were related to opioids. Text data were cleaned and lemmatized. We conducted a time series analysis to track changes in posts, mentions, user numbers, and the proportion of opioid-related posts relative to overall forum content.

Results

Our analysis showed that codeine was the most popular opioid on the forum, while fentanyl and oxycodone—reported by the media as spreading in Poland—did not garner much attention. Overall, throughout the 20 years, the discussions on opioids remained at a stable level, with a decline in posts and users since 2021, and other topics becoming more frequent.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that media narratives may be exaggerated and offer additional support for the view that Poland is currently not experiencing the early stages of a crisis. Nonetheless, we emphasize the need for further research on actual opioid consumption patterns.