![]() One minute you are injecting and feeling high, and the next you're waking up with no idea what happened in the last ten minutes." ![]() It is very odd that an OD does not create a massive schism in your thought process, saying, 'Hey, you are on the wrong track, you nearly killed yourself-stop!' Instead I just thought I fucked up. I thought I better be a bit more careful, but nothing more than that. He said, 'Do you realize what you are doing? You nearly died.' I noticed my boyfriend had been crying."ĭidn't it stop you from wanting to inject heroin? "No. "The first thing I noticed was that the doctor was annoyed at me-he was really cranky. "I took a hit in the car with my boyfriend, and the next thing I knew I woke up at 2A M in a hospital," she says. She was first saved with naloxone at age 19, after ignoring warnings the heroin she had just bought was highly potent. She's been saved herself seven times, three by naloxone.īarbara describes overdosing and being brought back with naloxone as a "bit like banging your head" while cycling to work. #Side effects of dying and coming back to life crackBarbara, a former long-term heroin and crack user now receiving heroin substitute treatment, estimates she's saved the lives of around 15 fellow heroin users using a mix of CPR, mouth-to-mouth and, three times this year, naloxone. Within the heroin injecting community, overdoses are a part of life. And this denial from the truth kicks in and all you want is that medicine to give you oblivion again." It's almost like a defense mechanism that softens the harsh reality of what's just happened. ![]() The problem with coming 'round after naloxone is that the brain won't accept the fact you've been dead. I guess my fear of living was stronger than my fear of dying. "My life was a cycle made up of prison, hospitals, homelessness, and the constant search for oblivion to take my mind off the pain of living. "I've been revived with naloxone five times, and those are the ones that I remember," he continues. Every piece of you wants to get up and run, and just keep going, but there's no energy, nothing-total disassociation from reality, with everything around you playing out like a shit reality show in which you're the unwilling star with nowhere to hide." You just want to sink back into the protective wraparound the heroin brings you want everything and everyone to just go away. "You are disorientated, confused, weak, and very scared. ![]() You have no idea what's going on you're usually surrounded by a crowd of strangers people in uniform or your mates are in your face telling you that you were dead," says Kevin, now a drugs educator, peer worker, and consultant based in Bedford, England. I guess it feels like being a rabbit caught in the spotlights. "I guess that feeling somehow translates as how it would feel to die, and it's actually quite a relieving and comforting feeling that somehow overrides the reality and fear of death."Īs his body began to shut down-as his lungs stopped working and his brain began to be starved of oxygen-he was jabbed with a shot of naloxone and the Grim Reaper faded into the distance. "I can remember sinking into that warm envelope-the comfort zone-and everything just falling off my shoulders, the feeling of being 'free,'" says former long-term heroin user Kevin Jaffray about a time he OD'd hours after coming out of prison. In Wales last year, kits handed out to people who work and live with heroin users saved two lives a day.īut what's it like to be brought back from the grave, and what about those people who, in the heat of the moment, have pulled back heroin users away from crossing the River Styx? That's five lives a day in the capital, without adding on the extra lives saved by drug workers and heroin users who administer it too. ![]() Figures for England are patchy as there is shamefully no national naloxone program, but the London Ambulance Service told me that in the last ten months 1,440 people have been given naloxone. At least five heroin overdose victims are brought back from the brink using naloxone every day in Scotland. Naloxone is re-animating hundreds of people in Britain each year. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |