San Francisco Police Officer Uses Naloxone Anti-Overdose Kit To Save Man’s Life

A new tool given to San Francisco police allowed an officer to save the life of a man who overdosed on opiates.

Officer Mike Mellone is one of several officers trained to use the city’s new naloxone rescue kit.

Police said Mellone was called to help a man found unconscious on Capp Street in June. Mellone sprayed the antidote into the man’s nose. The man survived and was released from the hospital a short time later.

“Within a few minutes, the person who was previously unconscious and was having trouble breathing, I started to see signs that he was coming to and by that time the ambulance crew had arrived,” Mellone recalled at a press conference on Friday.

Growing up in the Mission district, we used to use Capp street as a shortcut to go to the movie theaters on Mission street to watch the latest James Bond, Matt Helm or Derek Flint movie.

Now, it’s filled with a bunch of drug addicts and bums and not safe.
Not to mention all the Hondu drug dealers and illegals.

The Mission used to be a working-class neighborhood.
Now, it’s like Mexico.

All joking aside for a second, I would recommend anyone with a loved one, family member, or friend who has fought opiate addiction in the past please get one of these kits.
Most states allow their purchase by private individuals now, and they can be the difference between life and death, as we all know how long it takes emergency services to arrive.
Especially if the person is in rehab, or just coming out of rehab. Odds say they will relapse/back-slide, and when they do they usually go back to the dose they were taking pre-rehab. Because their tolerances have dropped during rehab this WILL kill them.
Give them another chance to get clean. This many times is the slap in the face they need to finally throw the monkey once and for all.

I remember when Jerry Garcia died. I was listening to Rush and he thought he was being really clever and funny by repeatedly saying “He’s just another dead doper”, as in “dead” get it? Grateful Dead? Doper? Yeah, ha ha ha Rush, real cool of you to make jokes about a dead man.

I have absolutely zero doubt that when he was in rehab for addiction to pain killers a few years later that he no longer saw addiction and addicts as such a laughing matter.

The GOPe politicians in NH are quite energized about “education” and especially about spending money to “fight the heroin epidemic” which they say is a “public health crisis”.

Now, I’ve treated many, many drug addicts in the last 40 years for their various ailments, and I absolutely know, as far as family dynamics go, “there but for the grace of God go I”. Lots of addicts have stellar backgrounds. I have a friend with four perfect children, his fifth is living in a car when he’s not stealing or shooting up in the woods.

Nevertheless, turning this from an individual responsibility into a public responsibility seems misguided. The disease model works, but only to a limited degree. It’s a disease IN THS SENSE ONLY: If you get it, there’s a great chance you will die, and it’s very hard to get better.

But the disease model fails in this very important respect: whether you have meningitis or pancreatic cancer, your survival is not in your hands. It really doesn’t matter how much you want to get better or what you are willing to do.

The small fraction of heroin addicts who recover do so because of their internal will and their ability to engage with help.

What Kelly Ayotte does about their situation, or what their Town Meeting does about teaching the cops to use Narcan, is beside the point.

Really? All you have to do is support the person’t breathing and get him to a hospital. If you use this “kit” the patient will wake up and act normal BUT it wears off faster than the Opiate that caused the overdose. So the victim dies later after you think he is OK. Street drugs are nothing to play with. NOT calling for help and using this “kit” can result in death. GET THEM TO A HOSPITAL-—SUPPORT THEIR AIRWAY—CHIN LIFT, JAW THRUST. CPR if necessary. Use the kit but realize it is only a temporary fix!!

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