Saint Narcan

There's been a rise of heroin users in my part of the world. It's actually a fascinating phenomenon. First, an area or group of people becomes severely addicted to pain pills. It's usually a group that are low-income and have some sort of free/low cost heath insurance program, mostly people on disability for chronic pains and problems. So these high-level pain pills are being distributed to people with real pain and not much money. These people find that their pain is pretty easily taken care of with less pills than they were prescribed, so the extras get sold for around $5-$20 a pop(depending on dosage). Some doctors become hesitant to prescribe them-Which leads to doctor-shopping, changing docs until you find someone that will give you the pain pills you ask for. For awhile there's a booming med market, everyone has a few extra bucks and no pain, but everyone's gotten right addicted. Then, the local law enforcement gets involved, does a few raids, cracks down on who gets the pills and who doesn't, and pills are costing the average buyer anywhere from $30 to $80. Fortunately for the average addict, there's a much cheaper drug becoming available: heroin.

Heroin is widely regarded as the King of all drugs, the most addictive illegal substance you can possibly get your hands on. I've seen hardened users draw the line at heroin-People that would do three lines of coke without blinking an eye. The biggest problem with heroin(you know, other than it's extreme addictiveness and reasonable price) is that the majority of cheap heroin is cut with something to fluff up the amount and earn the dealer a few extra bucks. Then, every once in awhile, a pure dose comes through. People get used to a certain dosage of heroin, and try to take as much as they would with a cut dose, which is a frightening thing to expose your body to. Usually, you don't know it's pure until you're on the floor foaming at the mouth.

Recently, I submitted an application for Narcan training. Naloxone/Narcan is a drug that reverses the effects of heroin, especially during an overdose. It's a free course offered by the Health Department, and you come away with two intranasal(up the nose) doses and knowledge on how to use it. I know people that do heroin, I know people who have died via overdose, and I know for a fact that these are people my mother associaties with. She swears she isn't doing heroin, but how long until she does?

So, I let my boss know that I needed to leave just a few minutes early for my training today. And that was fine, I'm always twenty minutes early anyway, but she and another woman who works here had plenty to say about me being trained.

"What are you gonna do if you go in to help someone overdosing, and there's dirty needles everywhere, and they stab you for ruining their high?!"

"Babydoll, I'm just looking out for you. You need to really think about what you're doing here."

Fuck. Off.

I'm not getting this training because I'm a silly little girl that wants to traipse through the Hood(capital H) and save the poor heroin sinners from their fate. Saint Naloxone, bestowing her nasal spray of life, performing great works in someone or another's name.

I'm getting this training because I care about the people I know enough to take a free opportunity to learn how to keep them from dying. And honestly, heroin dens with needles everywhere are something you only find in a large city-Raids are too frequent around here for anyone to be that stupid. This is training that has been proven to save lives. Knowledge is power, power to help.

I know more about the people I'm doing this for than you. I'm tired of people assuming I don't know what I'm doing. This is for my own reasons, and I hope I never need it, but one day I might. And when that day comes, I'll shove that naloxone up someone's nose and I'm gonna go ahead and bet no one is going to stab me.