Advisers to the F.D.A say Narcan is safe to sell over the counter

Detecting opioid overdose using naloxone: The effect of fentanyl on the respiratory system, respiratory system and emergency services

Many public health experts believe that if more people were to have the spray readily available at home, or in their pockets or knapsacks, many fatalities could be averted.

Between August of 2016 and August of 2022, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says more than 100,000 Americans died from drug poisonings.

Talk to your loved ones. The best way to prevent fentanyl use is to educate your loved ones, including teens, about it. Explain what fentanyl is and that it can be found in pills bought online or from friends. Aim to establish an ongoing dialogue in short spurts rather than one long, formal conversation.

You can learn how to spot an overdose. When someone overdoses from fentanyl, breathing slows and their skin often turns a bluish hue. If you think someone is overdosing, call 911 right away. If you’re concerned that a loved one could be exposed to fentanyl, you may want to buy naloxone, a medicine that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose and is often available at local pharmacies without prescription.

According to the voting panelists, the spray is as safe and effective as the drug it’s related to, which is an overdose-reversal injection. The panels decided that medical training is not required to use the drug.

The panel members said the side effects of withdrawal were very minimal compared to the medicine. Naloxone, which comes in a nasal spray, a vial and preloaded syringes, is believed to have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

The drug blocks the effects of opiates on the brain. Drug use can affect the respiratory system. Narcan is able to wake someone from a fatal overdose by having that connection interrupted. The instructions on the two-pack carton say that the Narcan administrator should apply one dose in the nostril of a person suspected of having overdosed and then call 911. A second dose can be applied to the other nostril if the person does not awaken in two or three minutes.

The impact of xylazine on the street fentanyl supply and the need for help in America’s opioid crisis

“It is absolutely horrible. That’s the reality, though,” said James Sherman, known as Sherm around Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, where he once used drugs and where he now tries to help those still on the streets.

The need for help has become more urgent over the last three years, as the animal tranquilizer xylazine, also called tranq, has become a bigger part of Philly’s street fentanyl supply. Even if you snort it or smoke it, Xylazine can cause huge wounds that won’t heal even if you inject it. Infections are a risk and can result in amputations.

The nature of America’s addiction crisis has changed over time. It’s a place to buy heroin under the elevated rail line and away from the tourist centers of downtown.

Fentanyl was more powerful than heroin. Xylazine was added to the street of Fentanyl in order to give it legs since the effects are not as long as heroin.

What happened to Dana? When drugs became more concentrated in Philadelphia, and where to get xylazine, even before they went to the drug dealers

A user told CNN what she had seen. You miss, and you get a sore. She said that people will end up in a hospital with a hole if they don’t take care of their sore. It had happened to her. She had a half-dollar-sized wound after her skin came off and it became bigger. I might have lost my hand.

Dr. D’Orazio said that patients started to have major wounds when they used injection drugs. “These wounds were a lot deeper, a lot more severe, there were big necrotic areas,” he said. They were deep in the muscles of the body. Sometimes you can see the bones, and we were starting to see more patients that were requiring amputations.”

“Nobody was coming to Kensington to buy tranq, they were coming to get heroin,” said Laurel of the Savage Sisters group. “You don’t go to your drug dealer and say, ‘Do you have a nutrition label with this?’ … You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” And whatever you get, you eventually feel a physical compulsion to do, she said.

The mostconcentrated place for Xylamine is Philadelphia, according to the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

That might slow the spread of xylazine, first noted in Puerto Rico in the 2000s, across the nation. There could be more negative consequences in Kensington.

When she was in withdrawal from xylazine, Dana said she was violently ill. “I’d rather come off fentanyl and heroin put together than xylazine,” she said.

What do people really think about mental health? Managing their emotions through the lens of addiction, abuse, and suicide: A case study of Savage Sisters

D’Orazio said there needed to be more affordable housing, more access to health care, fewer restrictions on drugs that treat addiction, and less stigma on what he says is a chronic disease, like diabetes. He said that there should be more focus on prevention of drug use disorder and looking at mental health care. His patients suffered abuse and neglect as a child. He said that there needs to be more intervention for people with trauma.

Maurice, whose voice has been weak ever since he was injected with tranq and fentanyl a couple of months ago, said that a lot of people try to numb themselves with pain from their past.

In conversations with CNN about why they’d come to Savage Sisters, several people brought up painful past experiences like rape or abuse almost immediately, as though those memories were simmering just below the surface. Maggie said that it has been a long life, and things he has to face. I need to get some kind of therapy. This thing happened to me when I was five years old that shouldn’t have happened to me.”

She said that the people who are out here want to numb their pain by using substances, and they should stop isolating the substance and look beyond it.

Savage Sisters offers several mental health programs for people in its recovery houses, and Laurel says it’s very expensive, but worth it. She has had to work hard to raise money. “Until it directly affects them, nobody cares. It’s ugly. Donating your money or time to charity is not a good idea, right? It is hard. It is rough. It’s sad. It’s painful. I had to come up with some ways to convince people that we are worth saving.

The zombie drug is what some news organizations have called xylazine. That term is hated by Laurel. “The only way that you can get rid of a zombie is by killing their brain,” she said. “Why would you say that about my friends? Why would you say that about a human? It’s already hard enough trying to get people to care about us.”

The White House is looking at xylazine as a potential “emerging threat,” which would trigger the development of a federal plan to address it, he said. In the meantime, the US Food and Drug Administration says it has taken action to stop unlawful imports of xylazine.