Free Narcan for IV Drug Users
Very interesting new program San Francisco is doing for its IV drug users–after taking a basic course and getting certified, IV drug users can get 2 bottles of Narcan (naloxone) for if their friends overdose. They’re told to just keep it in the bathroom cabinet and use it if their friends stop breathing or responding.
This was after administrators found out deaths were so high because users a) didn’t want to call 911 and have the cops show up and b) were trying things to revive their friends that didn’t work, like ice baths, hot showers, and injecting them with milk.
pray tell…why do we try so hard to save [and keep alive] people who are enjoying and looking to die? also, why are we wondering that the cost of healthcare is skyrocketing?
Just so you know Graham, you have to take all war stories with a grain of salt, sometimes two or three. Your PTSD vet in the previous article might very well have not even been a veteran.
I have done a lot of work at the VA and, as I am somewhat familiar with the military, I just have a sense when someone is bullshitting me. Most of the PTSD vets who I have dealt with, for example, claim to have been SEALs or Special Forces (or in some other elite unit) which is great but there are not that many of either category in the world and, as the ulitmate professional fighting men, they seem to be disproportionately represented in the ranks of the stereotypical homeless vets.
Generally speaking, a man with the discipline and drive to become a SEAL does not end up on the streets drinking listerine.
See my point? Your drunk patient watches movies and is as influenced by the popular culture as much as you are. He is probably feeding you what he wants to say and what you want to hear because it plays into your prejudices about the military and combat veterans, the overwhelming majority or who return to civilian life older, wiser, sadder perhaps, but in no way impaired.
(You don’t get drafted to be a SEAL, a Green Beret, or Ranger by the way as each of these are elite units within their services for which you have to volunteer.)
I betcha’ if you sat down with your patient and took a “military history” you would find large holes in his accounts, at least if you knew anything about the military. Kind of like the guys who claim to have been Green Berets in the Marines. Or who don’t know in what unit they served except in the broadest sense as in, “I was in the third Marine Division.”
The real deal will say,”I was in India 2/5″ or something specific.
No point except that you need to sharpen your bullshit detector.
I never said he was anything more than a drafted 19 year-old, Panda. Not a Seal, not a Green Beret, not a Ranger. The fact that he told this story played no part in what treatment he got or what happened to him.
If he wanted me to feel sorry for him, then wow, he pulled a fast one on me–but honestly, do I care that he tricked me? Not really. I’ve spent plenty of time at the VA myself. There’s a reason the VA has centers of excellence for PTSD and mental illness: it’s incredibly prevalent there.
No point except that you need to dull your jaded filter.
“You get two bottles of narcan”=”You can two more products to sell to someone else for more drugs”
How many IV drug abusers who are afraid to call 9-11 are going to show up at a class?
No one really wants Narcan, Kelly–pretty much only in an emergency, and there’s probably not a big market for it.
IV drug *users*. Not abusers.
The class is taught at the needle exchange van.
Yeah, I don’t see Narcan having much street value — all it does is suddenly and unpleasantly end your high. No fun on its own, actively anti-fun in combination with an opiate.
If I were a drug abuser/user (there’s really no difference), I’d sell my narcan under the brand-name “Ultimate Revenge” to someone who wanted to “get back” at their cheating fellow drug-abusing girlfriend or something like that. There’s a market for EVERYTHING when you’re a drug abuser.
You’re such an idealist, Mr. Grahamazon.
Graham, it has nothing to do with being jaded. It’s an issue of cultural competency, in this case knowing something about the military. If your patient was never in combat and does not have PTSD, then your assesment and plan for him is going to be wrong. Not to mention that the VA, Centers of Excellence of not, has limited resources which should not be spent on guys who are either not veterans at all or who never experienced any greater stress than hearing a couple shots fired in the distance which, and I know you won’t believe this but it’s true never-the-less, describes the largest majority of veterans even from Viet Nam.
The VA is a government bureacracy as interested in justifying its funding as any other organization. Back in the 80s they were passing out PTSD diagnosis like they were candy without, I might add, checking the service record of the patients. You can, for example, with a little effort and my permission get a copy of my military record and see exactly where, when, and how much time I spent in combat. Of course, this would require a knowledge of the Marine’s or Army’s “order of battle,” unit designations, and unit diaries which are easy to get but a tedious to cross reference. If some guy come in off the street, presents a DD214 and claims PTSD he is taken at face value and the validity of his claims are never verified.
Now, I now for a fact that at least half of the “wigged out” Viet Nam veterans I have treated are so full of shit their eyes are brown and some of them could not possibly have even been in the service, at least based on their sloppy stories which, if you were culturally competent, you would easily recognize.
This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, how the leftist orthodoxy portrays combat veterans.
If you have time persue a book called “Stolen Valor” which kind of rips the lid of a lot of your misconceptions.
Since when was using illegal drugs not considered abuse? Especially IV drugs that require narcan to reverse?
That’s splitting hairs, and I assume we have the DSM-IV to blame for that (And google says……..yup, we do).