It’s scary to think about the fact that so many of these crises start with people being in the hospital and then developing a prescription opioid use disorder.
Photos by Nema Etebar.
I work at a hospital right now as a nurse extern, so we’ve kind of seen both sides of it. So we see people coming in with – tons of people – drug overdoses or even just it’s scary to think about the fact that so many of these crises start with people being in the hospital and then developing a prescription opioid use disorder.
What’s concerning to me is that I feel like there’s such a stigma for people who have or had an opioid use disorder – there’s always the stereotype around them. And the sad thing that people don’t realize is that a lot of these people are people just like me or you that got hurt and were in the hospital and became addicted. Or, even just made a wrong decision once or twice. They’re still normal humans and they’re just looked at as so much lower than everyone else.
I feel like, especially being in Philly, we all have someone – either a friend of a friend or a family member – that’s gone through that kind of stuff. I’ve seen some of my very close family friends go through some horrible stuff because of the opioid crisis and have family members that have become addicted and it really just rips apart a family and it’s hard. It’s really hard.
I know that it’s not dangerous to give Narcan to someone who hasn’t overdosed – so say someone calls 911 because they see someone unconscious on the street and EMS goes, administers Narcan and it happens that this person wasn’t even overdosed – that doesn’t really matter but it’s better that people are administering it just to be safe. I know that there’s a lot of programs that are trying to make it more accessible for everyday people to be able to administer it, which I think is amazing. Because it’s not harmful if it’s given to someone who wasn’t actually overdosed.