Ronni.....He OD'd, but did he survive? Did he carry Narcan with him?
I started carrying Narcan just before my retirement. In my first year, I was credited with saving 14 lives using Narcan. The U.S. is seeing in excess of 100,000 OD deaths per year. Fentanyl is the one drug every police department is attempting to find the source for. We know a good bit about its network, but trying to locate the sources with undeniable proof has become a challenge.
As for addressing more rehabs, we have tried several times in Pennsylvania to getGovernment to either build more rehabs or have hospitals commit ‘x’ number of beds for rehabbing and hiring Addictionologists, but it has fallen on deaf ears. Instead, they set up hotlines to have addicts referred to doctors to help those people addicted to drugs. This plan is going nowhere, even though it has aided a few, but for the majority, it can’t be considered a success.
Police have finally accepted the fact that narcotic addiction is a disease and not a weakness brought on by voluntary use. When our young people (and in some cases older folks) have a few drinks, they become easy to convince trying a pill or two, or three. It doesn’t take many pills or injections to turn that person into an addict.
I had severe pain in my lower back for over two months and finally went to an Orthopedic doctor. He told me it was just a severe strain and maybe some inflammation. He prescribed Hydrocodone 4 times per day. Well, after I took the first one, I knew there was no way I could do my job taking this drug. This was in 2008. I contacted another doctor and he told me to immediately stop taking these pills and instead use Advil, which I did. A few years later, we learned that using opiates, even short term, can cause an addiction.
Ronni, I hope your relative survived, if he didn’t, you may want to consider being an advocate against using drugs, even when coaxed to do so by a friend. A person trying to get another person on drugs is no friend. Those are the type of friends you need to separate yourself from. “Just one time” is too many. I became an advocate and work with youth groups to try to teach them the pitfalls of taking drugs. A few of my former young people (all races) have contacted me over the past few years to thank me for saving their life because had they not known what we were teaching, they may have “just tried” a few pills. Just be prepared. You may get a few very early morning phone calls.
