Several years ago I sat in a meeting of an overdose committee and listened to a woman argue that we should have naloxone in all the middle schools. I am a data person and I pointed out that middle schools are not where people are overdosing. If you only have a limited amount of resources,…
This past week in Hartford, a 13-year old boy brought some bags of fentanyl to school. He later collapsed and received CPR from a school teacher. EMS arrived and resuscitated the child, who died two days later in the hospital. Bags of fentanyl were recovered from the scene and the boy tested positive for fentanyl. …
Overdose on the avenue — a woman in a tattered hoodie and black winter coat lays on the sidewalk next to a streetlight, with bystanders surrounding her. The woman, who looks to be in her forties, was talking to them and then she slowly collapsed against the pole and then to the ground. If I…
An old man sits on a bench in front of the police substation in one of the worst areas of town. When he sees the narcotics sergeant, he says, “How goes the War on Drugs?” The sergeant says, “Great. We put twenty dealers away this week. Sent them all to prison.” The old man sees…
There are three loaves of bread sticking out of a paper bag in the passenger seat of the car. I recognized them from the bakery on Park Street where people pick up fresh long loaves of the crusty pan de agua (water) bread hot out of the ovens when the shop opens at six. It…
“He cut them down in droves–the corpse fires burned on, night and day, no end in sight.” – The Illiad -Homer (Robert Fagles translation). In 2017, for a powerpoint presentation on the opioid epidemic, I made a slide that showed a graph of annual nationwide fatal ODs (about 15,000) from when I started as a…
This week I have been reading/listening to Sam Quinones new book “The Least of Us” about the changes in the opioid epidemic caused by the shift from heroin to fentanyl and the shift from ephedrine-based methamphetamine to a more dangerous type he calls P2P meth. A federal drug agent told me a few years ago…
When I started as a paramedic in Hartford in 1995, I thought drug users had character flaws and belonged in jail. Last week at a panel discussion in Hartford I stood up before National Drug Control Policy Acting Director Regina LaBelle, United States Senator Richard Blumenthal, United States Representative John Larsen, and the Mayor of…
She took the Dilaudid pill a friend offered her twelve years ago when she was sixteen. Her sister had recently died and her young life, filled with depression and anxiety, had lost its only source of light. The pill made her feel well in a way she had never felt before. She liked who she…
“Dopesick” is a new eight-episode series dramatizing the start of the opioid overdose epidemic that originated with Purdue Pharma’s marketing campaign for oxycodone .The series is populated with a fictional cast of characters, including a country doctor (Michael Keaton), a young woman injured in a coal mining accident and her parents who struggle to understand…
Xylazine, a horse tranquilizer, has been increasingly found as an adulterant in the East Coast street supply of fentanyl. In 2019 in Connecticut, xylazine and fentanyl were found together in 71 overdose deaths. There were 141 deaths of this combination in 2020, and in 2021, through August with still many cases outstanding, the number…
You’re called to an urgent care center on a priority one. The nurse is holding the front door of the center open for you and directs you back to a treatment room, where a PA and another nurse are providing ventilations to a two year-year-old. The story they tell you is the the child fell…
Instead of following the same failed policies, if we are serious about lessening the deaths and ending the slaughter of far too many Americans, we need a new approach.
800,000 Americans dead since 2000. No end in sight. People are dying because they use alone and their drug supply is contaminated. In the age of fentanyl, every bag or counterfeit pill bought on the street could contain a lethal dose. Stopping fentanyl at the border isn’t going to work. The War on Drugs (Interdiction…
“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.”- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels *** This week, the San Diego County Sherriff’s Department posted a video purporting to be a deputy overdosing after minimal contact with fentanyl…
By all accounts, the opioid overdose epidemic is getting worse. A recent study published in JAMA which analyzed emergency department visits (ED) found overdoses were up 29% from March to October of 2020 versus the same period for the previous year. Opioid overdoses 29% higher in 2020 than before the pandemic: Study Fatal Unintentional Drug…
As I approach the house with my medic pack over my shoulder and my monitor and isolation bag in my hands, two boys, maybe fifteen or sixteen, stand on the sidewalk out front of the building, and look at me expectantly. “He’s not alive? Is he? Is he still alive?” the shorter one asks. I…
Twenty-seven years ago, in a retaliatory shooting, a man in Hartford’s north end opened fire with an automatic weapon, killing his target. He was sentenced to fifty years in prison. He left at home a baby daughter, *** I get called for the unconscious. I arrive first and climb windy wooden stairs to the third…
Welfare check. The superintendent lets us in. The apartment is a poor man’s hoarderville, open boxes and dirty clothes stacked as high as the unwashed dishes in the sink. The man is sitting at a table with his head in his hands; a chess board in front of him. For a moment, I fear he…
On the Sunday morning sidewalkWishing, Lord, that I was stoned‘Cause there’s something in a SundayMakes a body feel alone.“Sunday Morning Coming Down” – Kris Kristofferson Twenty-six people in Connecticut died of overdoses on the four Sundays of this past April. Twenty-one males. Five females. One was aged 15-24, eight were 25-34, six 35-44, four 45-54,…