Word: biggs
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...users at needle-exchange programs and other sites in Chicago. The kits, which include vials of the drug naloxone (brand name Narcan), commonly used in hospitals and ambulances to reverse opiate overdose, have led to at least 1,000 successful overdose reversals in the city since 2001, according to Bigg. They are now part of a growing nationwide effort to stem the increasing rate of accidental drug-related fatalities...
...curiously, there has not been the same political outcry over naloxone distribution as there has been against other public programs, such as needle exchange, for addicts. So far, there have been no attempts to ban or limit funding for naloxone programs. Says Bigg, who once helped convince a skeptical doctor of their value in a radio debate: "I think people who study it up close realize that you could not have a purer case of a chance for life versus the risk of death...
That was the precisely the situation that Bigg walked into about two years ago, when he found a clammy, unconscious 25-year-old man sprawled out on a La-Z-Boy in a chic Chicago townhouse. He had overdosed on heroin and GHB (a party drug that is also used as a date-rape drug), according to his two panicked friends. The friends were high too, and afraid to call 911, so they called Bigg instead, whom they knew from Chicago Recovery Alliance's needle-exchange program...
...Bigg tried unsuccessfully to rouse the young man. He moved him onto a bed to help him breathe. Still no response. But about a minute after Bigg administered a 1-cc dose of naloxone, the young man's color improved and he began to come around. "He was like someone trying to go back to sleep, with his mother waking him," says Bigg...
...many, it's still not clear how effective naloxone programs are overall. Research on their impact has only just begun. One study, published in the Journal of Addictive Diseases in 2006, found that after increasing for years, heroin-overdose deaths in Chicago dropped 20% in 2001, the year Bigg's program began, and fell an additional 10% the following year. So far, addiction researchers say no significant problems have been reported with naloxone use, but they concede that much more studying needs to be done...