Human flesh eating people, bacteria and drugs

Something weird is going on on this continent this week. I read an article in the Huffington post yesterday (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/subhash-kateel/its-bigger-than-bath-salts_b_1562014.html) that made some great points about the decline of available health services for people with drug and mental health issues perhaps being a root cause of all of this bizarre cannibalistic behavior thats getting attention this week. I think this is a decent structural analysis but my own hypothesis has to do with people feeling so separate and alienated from one another and themselves that they feel driven in moments of (perhaps drug induced) insanity to incorporate others into their beingness. In sociological/political terms: this phenomenon is some extreme expression of anomie. My mother thinks otherwise, that people are projecting their own demons and self hate outwards onto others but then why would they want to consume them? I don't understand what's going on but it's extremely troubling. I have no explanation for the bacterial issue (http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/05/25/third-flesh-eating-bacteria-case-confirmed-in-georgia-possible-fourth/) but it seems to fit right in and that's even more worrisome. This past 5 years or so there has been a pop cultural obsession with zombie apocalypse and vampires so maybe that's part of what's driving it: we've turned our attention there. Last night I was reading about Big Lurch's cannibalistic PCP binge and it occurred to me I had seen a drawn out fictionalization seemingly based on that event in the form of a cartoon cannibal serial killing rapper. It was already a part of my consciousnesses whether I was aware of it or not. And now we're really being inundated with this kind of nonfictional news information as scary flesh killing drugs are growing more common (Krokodil in Russia and alarmingly, coke getting cut with hydrochloric acids in the states perhaps too?http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krokodil)So now that all we can read about in the news is this reenactment of the collective horror fantasy, how do we turn our attention to other things so as to curb its morbid reification? And how do we simultaneously act in a way that adequately addresses the social problems that have landed us in this apparent abyss?