8 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| August 2012
Cover story |
Naloxone
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
‘Every single one of our
hostel residents... has
been trained and issued
with naloxone mini-jets,
and drug-related deaths
in the city are down
significantly’
An incomplete pre
‘H
is modesty means that he plays it down, but actually he’s a local
hero,’ says CRI project manager at Sefton Integrated Recovery
Treatment Service, Alan McGee. He’s talking about Paul (not his real
name), a participant in the service’s take-home naloxone
programme and one of more than 100 service users, carers,
volunteers and staff to go through naloxone training at the service since last year.
‘It was only about a week and a half – two weeks at the most – after I’d been given
the naloxone that I actually used it,’ says Paul, a drug user for almost 30 years. ‘A lad
came to my house and said he had something to leave for a friend of mine. I’d known
him since he was a kid – I’m older than him – so I let him in, and he talked me into
letting him have a hit there. He fixed up, then said he was going to the toilet. I heard a
thud, and when I went and opened the door he was on the floor. He’d stopped
breathing and his heart had stopped as well, so I had to do CPR. I gave him half of the
naloxone at first, waited a few minutes, but nothing happened so I gave him the other
half. A few minutes later he came to.’
The ambulance he’d called turned up just after the overdose victim had come round,
Paul continues. ‘They were asking me all sorts of questions about the naloxone, like did
I have permission to use it and was I trained to use it. The lad didn’t want to go in the
ambulance at first but I talked him into doing it. The ambulance people told him that
he’d actually stopped breathing and all that, and that I’d brought him back from it. He
couldn’t thank me enough, but I didn’t think it was that much of a big deal.’
*****
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) recommended in a recent report
that the government should ease restrictions on who can be supplied with naloxone –
which can reverse the effects of an overdose to allow people to get further medical help –