Last month, I organized a Narcan
training exercise in Gasport at which 20 people were in attendance. It wasn’t
my first foray into such an endeavor, as I booked a class 2 years ago at my
company.
I have deemed such seminars to be
necessary because the opioid epidemic has become a regular part of Western New
York life. It has permeated every demographic – young and old; rich and poor;
black and white; urban and rural.
Even my beloved hometown -- which
some call God’s Country -- hasn’t been spared horrors. I used what happened
there over just 3 weeks of last November to set the table and garner interest
in last month’s class: There was one household that saw 3 different people
overdose, a worker at a local business OD’ed during that place’s busiest day of
the week, and a young lady died from heroin.
The statistics show that every one
of us knows someone who is addicted to some sort of opioid whether it’s heroin
or prescription pain pills like morphine, codeine, oxycodone, methadone and
Vicodin. The numbers for overdoses alone are staggering – Niagara County is on
pace for 400 overdoses this year while Monroe County saw 262 overdoses in the
first 90 days of this year.
That’s why Narcan should become a
regular part of your first aid kit. US Surgeon General Jerome Adams said as
much last week. We should heed his advice.
Narcan is the name brand of
naloxone, an opiate antidote. The active ingredient competes with opioids to
bind with the same receptors in the brain that feast on the drugs. Usually, it
reverses the effects of an opioid overdose in 2 to 3 minutes, buying the
poisoned person time for emergency medical help to arrive.
Without it, someone overdosing can
have his or her breathing slow down or stop completely, causing brain damage or
death. With heroin and the like, overdosing’s effects aren’t immediate – they
typically develop over a 1 to 3 hour period; meaning that someone can come to
work or shop at a store in a relatively normal-appearing state then suddenly devolve
into total misery.
Narcan is easy and risk-free to
administer. The layman lacking even the most basic knowledge of first aid
skills can use it. It is done with a misting agent that is sprayed into the
affected party’s nose. No needles. No mess. And, if you were wrong about the
diagnosis, there are no ill effects. You can’t get any easier or safer than
that.
County governments sometimes offer
training and kits free of charge. In the meantime, you can do as I did and book
group classes. I called on the services of the Batavia-based Lake Plains
Community Care. Their emergency medical services trainer gave an excellent
seminar, conducted hands-on training and outfitted each of the trainees with a
Narcan kit. All of that was fully funded by a state grant that Lake Plains uses
to train the community.
Ever the proponent of Narcan, over
the years I’ve had quite a few people ask me, “why would you bother saving
someone who doesn’t want or deserve to be saved and will just do it again?”
Who said they don’t want to be saved
– and aren’t all lives are precious?
If you had the ability to save lives
with Narcan but abandoned it out of such indifference if not spite, would you
want to live with the burden that a child you know is left fatherless or a dear
friend no longer has a daughter of her own?
We all need to understand that no
one aspires to be an addict. A lot of the young kids who are now messed up made
an initial stupid mistake to mess with the drugs. Youthful mistakes can be fixed
(although it’s difficult). And, in a majority of the addiction cases users are
working class fathers and mothers who got hurt on the job or at home, were
prescribed painkillers and got hooked. Parents who tried to manage pain so they
could continue to provide for their kids sure don’t match the typical profile
of a druggie.
Being prepared for a heroin overdose
that could happen at your doorstep might seem unnecessary. “It will never
happen here,” you might say. But, realize that too many mothers and fathers and
husbands and wives never thought that a heroin addiction would strike and tear
apart their family. It can happen to anyone, anywhere. The life you save might be
a coworker, friend, or member of your own family.
Be ready.
From the 16 April 2018 Greater Niagara Newspapers and
Batavia Daily News
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