Learning about Naloxone
LEARNING SESSION OFFERED ON OPIOID-OVERDOSE PREVENTION
In a side room off the Crossings branch of the Lethbridge Public Library on Sunday afternoon perhaps two dozen chairs are set up in rows facing a table and a podium at the front. Beside an Arches banner at the back of the room there are small yellow boxes with biohazard warning symbols on the side neatly stacked. Free sharps boxes that participants of the Needle Disposal and Naloxone-use session can take home if they feel the need.
About six people show up for the session itself, but Graham Black, Gay men’s health co-ordinator for Arches, presents as if the room is packed full as he begins his talk. The first part of the session deals with needle disposal and fluid borne diseases like HIV and Hepatitis which drug addicts can be exposed to, and the relatively small chance (one in 300,000) of having such diseases transmitted to others by an accidental needle poke.
The second part of the session deals with how to administer Naloxone. Those in attendance watch with keen interest as Black demonstrates how to draw Naloxone into the needle and inject to the exterior of the upper thigh to counter an opioid overdose. The entire session has a feel of a well-worn path, on which Black has traversed many times in the past.
“We do this type of training quite often,” he explains. “It is a free training we provide. It can be for community members as well as businesses. We have also done it for schools, elementary and high school students ... I think this is a very visible issue in the community right now, and people are very excited to hear some solutions for it, and steps they could take to respond to it and get involved to help with the situation. All the feedback I have gotten from this training is people feel very empowered to deal with this issue.”
Black admits not all the sessions go as amicably as the one on Sunday did.
“We sometimes come across individuals who are a bit more frustrated with our services,” he says. “However, by showing a lot of evidence and evidence-based research on these things, generally we can have a really good conversation with those people. And even if in the end they do not agree with us, we can still leave quite happy we have been able to hear each other out.”
Sara Weaver was one individual at Black’s Sunday session who has no quarrels with the City’s focus on harm reduction, despite the at times angry public outcry about discarded needles.
“I am actually a recovering drug addict; so this really hits close to me,” said Weaver. “What we have now in Lethbridge is huge in terms of supports. We didn’t have that when I was using.”
Weaver, who has been six years in recovery, feels drug addicts in Lethbridge now, more than ever before, have a fighting chance to get clean.
“The first choice to use a drug is yours,” she says, “but after that the drug is the one in control and you don’t have a choice anymore. Addicts deserve a fighting chance. They deserve these resources, and they deserve a chance to be able to get sober. To those who say people who are addicts are useless or hopeless, and why should we give them the resources? They are human, too. I am living proof you can get clean and stay clean.”
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