Portland woman in recovery shares why she carries naloxone

PORTLAND, Ore. (KPTV) – Earlier this month health officials in Washington state started to encourage everyone to carry naloxone because of a sharp rise in opioid overdoses.

“If I had the opportunity to save somebody else’s life I’m going to do it. Just like if someone was drowning in a pool and I know how to swim, I’m going to get them out,” Amy Arrington said.

Arrington lives in Portland and is a recovering addict.

“Opioids aren’t my drug of choice but for many in the recovery community, it is, and it’s an epidemic and with that being said the high number of people using it these days, they could be anywhere and suffer an overdose and have to wait until paramedics show up to be administered life-saving medication,” she said.

Arrington now carries naloxone with her everywhere she goes because a few months ago she witnessed a man on a bus suffer an overdose and no one had naloxone.

“There’s a shout saying he’s unconscious, he’s not breathing, and there’s a man unconscious not breathing on the back of the bus and he had a very distinct rattled breathing to him which indicates a drug overdose,” she said. “And nobody had Narcan including me.”

Arrington isn’t sure what happened to the man but said she wants to make sure she is ready in case something like that happens again.

“Had somebody had this, it could have saved his life,” she said. “I just thought if that was somebody’s son, somebody’s dad, somebody’s brother I thought about the people that were going to miss him.”

If you are interested in carrying naloxone, here is where to find naloxone in Washington and in Oregon.

“All of my best friends, all of my people that I’ve met in narcotics anonymous, all of the people in the recovery community, 90 percent of them are opioid addicts. If they were to relapse I would want someone to help them. I would want someone to step up and be brave enough to do this for them, I wouldn’t want to lose my friend to this disease,” Arrington said.

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