Watching the news one evening, the police chief was struck by a report about a hospital in Indiana installing a vending machine to dispense naloxone for free and with no questions asked. But how to get what was technically a prescription drug into the hands of the general public?

Mattingly thought it would be a good idea if everyone who knew someone addicted to the drugs had naloxone on hand. There is, on average, a death a week from opioids in Vine Grove and surrounding Hardin county – not atypical for a region hard hit by the worst drug epidemic in US history.

Every time I filled that machine up, within a couple of days it was empty Kenneth Mattingly But it takes nearly 10 minutes on average for a paramedic or the police to reach someone overdosing. A spray of the antidote can reverse an overdose so fast that within a few minutes a person is standing up and walking away, sometimes unaware just how close they came to dying. Police officers and paramedics regard naloxone as something of a miracle drug.

I gave my police officers Narcan to carry on duty but it still takes them time to get there and people die in the meantime.” He would probably have died if she hadn’t had Narcan. We hit him with a couple more and basically saved his life,” he said. So she hit him with a dose and brought him around. “She was a recovering addict herself and she happened to have Narcan she had gotten from one of her treatment facilities.

Then Mattingly responded to an opioid overdose call early last year at which a woman saved a friend’s life because she was carrying a naloxone spray, often known by its brand name Narcan. Kenneth Mattingly’s daughter was twice brought to the brink of death by heroin and twice pulled back by paramedics carrying an antidote, naloxone.

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