I am proud to announce my latest book, The Friends and Family Guide to the Opioid Overdose Epidemic: Including How to Recognize and Treat an Overdose, will be published on August 26, 2025 by Johns Hopkins University Press. You can preorder at this link: Order Now Here’s the description from the publisher’s site: A practical…
“We need a lot more naloxone than ever before. The drugs are so powerful today some people need 20 milligrams”. I hear this or versions of it in many of the opioid task force meetings I attend around the state. No, I say. The research I have based on over 20,000 EMS run forms shows…
A mayor in California has proposed giving free fentanyl to his city’s homeless to kill them off. California mayor wants to give homeless people ‘all the fentanyl they want’: ‘Need to purge these people’ “Quite frankly, I wish that the president would give us a purge. Because we do need to purge these people,” Lancaster…
The latest CDC provisional overdose fatality data is out and continues to show nationwide decline in fatal overdoses through October of 2024, down 26.5% over the last 12 months and 27.6% from its June 2023 12-month high, declining to a level equivalent to May 2020 (shortly after COVID hit). It should be noted that more…
The call is for a seizure. A 9-year-old boy with epilepsy falls off the couch and is observed seizing, with full tonic-clonic activity. His mom shouts for the boy’s older sister to call 911, and then she goes to her purse and takes out the medicine his doctor prescribed for him. She sticks the nozzle…
This week I attended a meeting in the Governor’s office in the state capitol to advocate for a bill creating the state’s first overdose prevention center. I was one of a group of eight meeting with the Governor’s chief of staff. Our group included two mothers who had lost their sons to overdose and were…
You are dispatched for an overdose. You find a 48-year-old homeless man sitting on a park bench, eyes closed, nodding forward. You give him a little shake and he opens his eyes and looks up at you. You ask him if he is okay and he says he is all right. He says he took…
Back in 2016 when the opioid epidemic was starting to heat up, I started paying attention to the heroin bags laying on the ground. The bags were Small glassine envelopes that hold 0.1 grams of powder (mix of opioids like heroin or fentanyl and cut with adulterants like sugars, baby formula, etc) when full, often…
I am a huge fan of the show The Pitt, which I have twice posted about. I love its authenticity, both in medical treatment and emotion. That said, the last two episodes which involve a mass shooting with 80 plus critical patients strained my credibility with all the miraculous and creative saves done by the…
The Investigation team of a local news station ran a story about ambulance response times in Hartford. I-Team: Response times steadily increasing in Hartford, dispatch data shows The hook call: A baby wasn’t breathing. 911 was called. The ambulance response was delayed. The baby, who was eventually transported in a police car (22 minutes…