Recently, there has been a growing trend of heroin use nationally, and right here in Ohio. Heroin is an illegal, dangerously addictive drug that is derived from morphine, and is typically injected into the user’s veins.
Nathan Birt, a paramedic and part-time firefighter in Bethel, and Amanda Nave, a fellow paramedic, claim to have encountered a large number of people who have been high or overdosed on heroin.
“I’ve been on calls where people are overdosing and won’t tell me what they are on. We aren’t the police, we are here to help you,” said Birt.
Just in Ohio, the state said that 426 people died from heroin overdoses in 2011. That number jumped up to 680 in 2012. With this, the overall fatal drug-related deaths have jumped from 1,154 in 2011 to 1,272 in 2012.
Another troubling alarm that was raised by Birt and Nave is a drug called Naloxone. Naloxone, also called Narcan, is a drug that completely blocks opiate receptors in the nervous system. When someone is overdosing, paramedics like Birt and Nave can use this to bring down the user’s high. While this sounds like a helpful solution to help someone not die, it has also been recently made available to the public.
“Now two users can get high together and bring themselves back to life if they get too high. One user will shoot up while his friend watches him and if he looks like he is about to overdose, he just uses the Narcan on him and brings him back. Then his friend shoots up and the cycle repeats itself until someone dies,” said Nave.
According to both Birt and Nave, the primary age of heroin users is early to mid-20s, but they have heard of users being as young as 18.
Matt Summers
Reporter