August 31 is Overdose Awareness Day in the UK. It is a day when people working in the harm reduction field spread awareness about how to make yourself safer if you are an IV drug user. They also tell others how to save a life if someone they are around overdoses in front of them. The predominant focus is on heroin which makes sense since the majority of overdoses are from accidental opiate overdose. Educating people about what to do if someone overdoses in front of you is a great idea because the bottom line is that it saves lives. In the U.S., people are so afraid of getting arrested that they will let their friends die on the front steps of hospitals, if they are lucky to get that far. Too many people die senselessly.
Many heroin addicts have witnessed overdoses and it's scary. If someone overdoses in front of you, it is important to physically move them to the "recovery position" on their side. The picture shows the final position they need to be in to breathe and not die on their own vomit. This position applies to overdoses on alcohol, too. Heroin is not the only drug that causes an overdose. If you do nothing more, move the person to this position and call 911 or the authorities in your country. Failing to get help will be something you live with forever.
Although most people think that the most vulnerable person to overdose is someone new to injecting, it is not them. The highest risk is someone who has been using for a few years because their liver can fail. Another person at very high risk is the one who quit for a little while, a day to years, and then comes back to it attempting to use the same amount as the last time they used. Tolerance drops fast with opiates, so you cannot do as much as you did the last time.
I wish that legislation would change in the U.S., so that there are needle exchange programs in every city, and harm reduction is the norm. I wish that everyone could get clean who wanted to, that there was access to the proper treatment. I wish the 12 step groups were not touted as the only acceptable treatment, that Suboxone prices would drop, and that these topics would be just as important as other health conditions. But, I don't get what I want too much. People pass too much judgment onto substance users.
Imagine if we treated cancer patients with the disdain that we treat alcohol/substance users. Breast cancer isn't even the #1 killer, but more money goes into that than so many others problems that are less fatal. Someday, I hope to see substance addiction treated with the reverence that cancer gets. We are all survivors.
*Image courtesy of
http://www.saferinjecting.info/recoveryp...