Heroin Overdose Antidote Offers Hope For Vulnerable Inmates

Filed Under: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Denver Health Medical Center, Harm Reduction Coalition, Heroin, Heroin Overdose Antidote, Ingrid Binswanger, Jody Rich, Joshua Blum, Kaiser Permanente Colorado's Institute for Health Research, Naloxone, Narcan, Sharon Stancliff

DENVER (AP) – When he was a teenager, Lee Gonzales could not save his uncle from a heroin overdose. Now he worries that the same drug could kill him after he gets out of jail.

As Gonzales remembers, he had rousted his uncle from previous heroin stupors by propping him up and splashing water on his face. But there was no one around to help that day. And there was nothing available like the bright orange prescription bottle the 32-year-old heroin addict held in his hand on a recent morning.

“This is enough medicine to save somebody, huh?” Gonzales said, fiddling with the nasal inhaler as a doctor sat with him in a cinderblock interview room in Denver’s downtown jail.

Similar scenes are unfolding in a growing number of jails and prisons across the country as health officials train soon-to-be-released inmates to use the overdose-reversal drug naloxone to save others and sometimes themselves.

Dr. Joshua Blum teaches inmates about the nasal spray, which can undo the effects of an opiate overdose almost instantly. Blum told Gonzales, who was jailed on theft warrants, he could take the antidote with him when he is freed.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Gonzales said.

Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, has become a key tool in curbing overdoes resulting from the nation’s opioid abuse epidemic. The class of drug that includes prescription painkillers and heroin was involved in a record 28,648 deaths in 2014, and opioid overdoses have more than quadrupled since 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recently released inmates are particularly vulnerable.

The push to equip inmates is new, fueled by research showing former prisoners in Washington state were nearly 13 times more likely to die of an overdose in the two weeks after their release than other people. Heroin tolerance goes down while users abstain behind bars, but they often return to their previous dose when they get out, putting them at greater risk.

“They’re very anxious. They are released to environments where they have a lot of exposure to drugs. They are triggered to use, and they may not have support systems to help them,” said Dr. Ingrid Binswanger, senior investigator for Kaiser Permanente Colorado’s Institute for Health Research, who worked on the study.

Researchers also found that 8 percent of overdose deaths in Washington state were former prisoners.

Inmates set to be released from San Francisco’s county jail have been offered naloxone kits since the program started there in March 2013. More than 1,700 inmates in six New York state prisons have been trained to use the antidote, and at least 600 have taken kits with them on their way out.


Collected By'"http://denver.cbslocal.com/2016/03/23/heroin-overdose-antidote-naloxone-narcan/