Naloxone

Paris Peterson as Tyler.

And Issa Mzee as Narcan Girl.

Oh, my God.

Narcan Girl.

That was funny.

And she's the

Oh, fentanyl.

It's so crazy.

So I think that it is very multifactorial and it is a very much a multi-agency, multi-entity approach.

I think that the coordination is a big component of it, both in getting the word out, but also in getting not only resources like treatment for treatment out there, but getting things like Narcan.

We have worked so hard to saturate the state with Narcan, naloxone.

and really making it easily available for anyone and everyone and encouraging people to have it available and to use it.

And really trying to normalize that I think has been significantly helpful in terms of ensuring a lot of overdoses are not fatal.

And so it is a nasal spray that anyone out there without really any training, you know, can pick up and administer to someone.

And so the approach then for fentanyl has been for us is to, again, increase awareness, increase awareness about fentanyl and the dangers of it, but also saturating the communities.

I mean, just getting access, normalizing people having Narcan and Naloxone, being willing to use it.

Listen, what's more expensive,

testers or Narcan?

Yeah, Narcan, you know, I think we got some in the back.

At the comedy club in Miami, we have

Narcan on deck.

Thank God we've never had to use it.

I don't...

It's fantastic that it's treating anxiety, but you see to make sure we're doing everything safely.

The other tricky thing about pregamblin, if we have an overdose, What's the first thing a doctor does when they're worried about an overdose? They give us Narcan because they're worried there's an opioid in there.

We have an easy opioid blocker there that can bring someone back alive instantly.

But pregabalin is not going to respond to Narcan.

So it's not ideal at all.

We're going to continue to be in a bad way if we're on pregabalin.

I've spent most of my adult life close to addiction without ever being an addict myself.

Nearly 30 years in the criminal justice system has put me beside people withdrawing in jail cells, provide people with Narcan, seeing families exhausted from trying to save someone they loved and people who got clean only to return to drugs and die.

And ministry and chaplaincy later brought me alongside the grief addiction leaves behind.

And along the way, I buried some friends of my own.

It didn't care that there was a little girl who called him dad.

And during my years in corrections, I saw people going through withdrawal, and I watched addiction tear families apart.

I personally administered Narcan to people in the jail.

And I also watched people spend months incarcerated.

And, like, it just got super dark and... a lot of drug abuse too.

Like there was a couple times or I had overdosed on, I know one of the times, one of the overdose I had was on fentanyl and Narcan was the only reason I had any help to get okay over that and whatnot.

There's so many other drugs too that I didn't even, I didn't even know what was being injected in.

When you

Like, I wish I didn't come back.

Like, that should have been it.

Why the hell did y'all give me Narcan? Like, come on, you know what I mean?

But

of safe medication.

I mean, taking Tramadol or Talwin or, you know, Naloxone or something else instead of opioid, you know, you can't do that when you need your mental capacity.

So it's looking at the spectrum, it's the least of the evils.

And it's something that we now know we can reverse the damaging effect.

And we'll continue to work.

assist with things throughout D.C. and the local community to make sure that people have awareness, access to safety resources like test strips and Naloxone and just trying to get that information out and get people the help that they need.

And I'll just add, you know, as Desiree was talking about, you know, we're whole person care.

And we just did a or I was involved in a participant experience interview and got some really wonderful feedback that folks feel that we provide hope, which is a really, really important thing for them going through that journey.

normal state somehow?

Yeah, they gave them a, what do you call that stuff that brings them back to life? Narcan? Narcan? Something like that.

So then that happens, and I don't think anybody in the room really notices because they're inside here and whatever, but I definitely notice there's sirens, the whole thing.

then like a couple hours later there's a shootout so there's literally on the corner there's a shootout and they have this guy barricaded in the building kitty corner across the street and the police helicopters talking to the guy and you can hear it in here like you heard it right huggy