Annie Abbate of West Hartford and UConn School of Medicine\u2019s class of 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The picture of the sign said, \u201cWhy is Narcan free to a dope addict but my insulin is $750 a month?\u201d It was social media post by someone I know and love. I saw it several times \u2014 it was shared by many people I call friends or family.<\/p>\n
Overdoses in Connecticut are reaching new highs this summer. I\u2019m grateful to live in a state that sees the uptick as deserving of statewide action and resources, like Narcan. But not everyone in my social circle agrees.<\/p>\n
I know the people who shared that post well. They are kind, hard-working people who are concerned for their own resources. But that concern might make it hard to view addiction with compassion. They might see people who use drugs as selfish, drains on society and their communities. I don\u2019t know if they have loved or lost a \u201cdope addict.\u201d In Connecticut, where Narcan is readily available to save lives, they might never have to survive that. I lived in a place where Narcan supplies dried up during a long hot summer, and it was horrible.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, in the months before I entered medical school at the University of Connecticut, I interned at a harm reduction organization called HIPS in northeast Washington, D.C. Its clients, as we respectfully refer to them, are predominantly HIV-positive transgender sex workers and people who use injection drugs. Most of them are people of color. In the last month of my internship at HIPS, we ran out of Narcan, the lifesaving drug for opioid overdose. When the city failed to refill our supply, as they had promised, people started dying.<\/p>\n
The one that hit hardest for our staff was a man named Ray.<\/p>\n
I never met Ray, but I saw pictures of him hung around the office after he died. He was an older black man and a D.C. native. He was an occasional heroin user, as are most overdoses. It\u2019s counter-intuitive for those of us who are not initiated, but heroin overdoses rarely happen to people with heavy, daily dependencies unless their drugs have been tampered with or cut with fentanyl, the synthetic medical-grade opioid that is 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin and can kill anyone. Unless fentanyl is involved, for daily users, overdose is unlikely. Their tolerance is high and they know exactly how much to use. Daily users are also rationing so they have enough for their next dose.<\/p>\n
The people at highest risk for overdose actually use the least. They\u2019re the \u201cfirst timers\u201d or the \u201cfirst time in a long time-rs\u201d, maybe because they\u2019ve just gotten out of jail or rehab. Or they\u2019re the ones who only use when life really calls for it \u2014 people like Ray.<\/p>\n
Ray was friends with one of our directors, whose name was Andrew. I heard in whispers from the staff when Andrew wasn\u2019t within ear shot that Ray took care of Andrew \u2014 he looked out for him.<\/p>\n
One story I heard was about Andrew\u2019s shoes. Andrew was walking down the street one day when Ray saw him and yelled out to him, \u201cHey Andrew, I\u2019ve got some shoes for you.\u201d Andrew really didn\u2019t need shoes. He\u2019s an educated, employed, 6-foot, white, Canadian man with glasses so thick they could accidentally burn up every ant hill he passes. But Ray thought Andrew needed new shoes. He went inside his house and he brought out a pair, which were likely his own before he gifted them to Andrew. It was a gesture of pure generosity.<\/p>\n
A few days after I first saw that social media post about free Narcan and $750 insulin, it circulated again, but someone changed it to include the caption \u201cOther struggling people aren\u2019t the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a message I try to convey when I advocate. If that message fails, I tell people that Narcan programs aren\u2019t for addicts \u2014 they\u2019re for the people who love them. They exist for the people that they\u2019d leave behind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read an opinion editorial first published in the Hartford Courant by Annie Abbate of UConn School of Medicine\u2019s class of 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":127358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-151912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 09:24:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/127358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151912"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=151912"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=151912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}