Today is Overdose Awareness Day
Having an overdose means having too much of a drug, or combination of drugs, for your body to handle. Not all overdoses have a deadly outcome, but way too many do. For over a decade the number of overdose deaths in the US has increased every year. The most recent data show that almost 5 people per hour died of an overdose in the US in 2013. This makes drug overdose the leading cause of accidental death in the country.
In New York City the rate of deadly overdoses increased by 41% between 2010 and 2013. Every day New York City loses more than two people to drug overdose.
This is an important day for me because too many lives have been lost already, and too many lives will be lost if we do not raise our voice to raise awareness about this epidemic. Stigma, prejudice and fear of legal consequences still silence many people affected. Moral politics are preventing policy and law changes that we know could reduce the number of overdose deaths. Things can be done differently. Other countries have shown that changing policies and laws can decrease the number of deadly overdoses. Harm reduction interventions that educate and support people in using more safely are effective. The war on drugs is not.
Before coming to Community Access I worked at a safe injection facility in Olso, Norway, and I saw many people overdose. And yet every person that overdosed survived because of the simple fact that health care staff were around when it happened. People using drugs did not have to hide in a place where no one could find them. Instead they could come to a place where people would help them.
Community Access is highlighting this day by training staff, tenants and participants in how to reverse an opiate overdose with Narcan, by thinking about what the city and the country can do differently to stop this epidemic, and by remembering those who have survived and those who have been lost to a drug related overdose.
