Overdose Preventers Seek Fewer Lives Lost

The first time Kaysie Mire saw someone overdose on opioids, she was alone, scared, and shaking. But she was also ready: She ran to her tent, grabbed a syringe, injected naloxone into her neighbor’s arm, and saved a life.

City officials and social service providers gathered on the Green for National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day to urge more members of the public to learn, like Mire, what to do in the face of mounting emergencies stemming from substance abuse and contamination.

Meanwhile, Mire and her boyfriend, Tyrell Jackson, spoke to the Independent that same day from outside the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) on State Street about how a housing crisis and epidemic of loneliness and despair are contributing to an overwhelming number of local overdoses — and how their own experiences with homelessness forced them to reckon with and reverse many of those highs gone wrong. 

“This is a public health issue,” Mayor Justin Elicker said to a crowd of around 20 onlookers on the Green on Monday afternoon. ​“There is help and there is hope.”

City Health Director Maritza Bond reported during the conference that there have been 63 fatal overdoses in New Haven between the beginning of 2023 through the thirtieth of June, as compared to 127 throughout 2022 and 119 in 2021. Of this year’s 63 overdoses, 90 percent of the fatalities involved fentanyl. 

Bond said the city is aiming to lower those numbers by partnering with community organizations to distribute free testing strips around the city — and working with the police and fire departments to monitor where the problem is most severe to make sure providers are funneling resources into those areas.

Despite the city’s efforts to prevent overdoses by getting services directly to those consuming or injecting substances, Bond still pushed for all residents to take responsibility for helping others if the need arises: ​“If you see someone that’s experiencing some level of symptoms, know the signs, stay with the victim, and call 911.” 

Organizations can request overdose response trainings from the New Haven Health Department here.

The Yale Community Health Care Van and Connecticut Harm Reduction Alliance Van both offer clean syringes, test strips, HIV and Hepatitis C screenings, and naloxone kits — contact or find out more about those organizations here and here.

Liz Znamierowski, a nurse practitioner who works with Yale Community Health Care, added that in addition to offering discreet home delivery for safe injection materials, individuals can drop off drug samples at their offices at 270 Congress Ave. (open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.) for testing. Since January, the group has used fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to identify 137 drug samples, 95 of which have been opioids; 96 percent of those opioids tested positive for fentanyl. 

Znamierowki pressed the importance of learning rescue breathing to help individuals who might have consumed substances laced with other synthetic analogs like xylazine, a veterinary sedative that doesn’t respond to Narcan, in addition to carrying Narcan kits and familiarizing oneself with the signs of an opioid overdose. 

“Since 2018, I never leave my house without my Narcan kit,” said Fiona Firine, whose son, Cameron, died in his childhood bedroom that year after taking a laced oxycodone pill.

“The day Cameron died was the first time we heard the word, ​‘fentanyl,’” Firine said. She now runs a nonprofit called ​“For Cameron,” educating parents and children about the risks of unregulated substances, particularly fentanyl, which is 15 times more potent than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. 

John Labieniec, the coordinator for Compassionate Allies Serving Our Streets (COMPASS), the city’s non-cop crisis response team, offered a different perspective. While families, friends, and unassuming first-time users may be unsuspecting of substances proliferated on the streets, ​“There’s not an addict out there not keenly associated with the risk of fentanyl,” he said. 

“But we’re not always open about why that risk is taken. Underlying mental health and trauma are often absent from conversations about addiction.” 

He said COMPASS focuses on building relationships with New Haveners through regular outreach, in hopes of beginning conversations with people who might be the most resistant to speaking about their situation or seeking help. Read more about that work here.

Tent City Vets: "Everyone's Tired"

Kaycie Mire and Tyrell Jackson, on the other hand, spoke to the Independent about how those entrenched in communities plagued by substance abuse are trying to combat chronic tragedy.

The pair formerly lived in a homeless encampment off Ella Grasso Boulevard, until the city evicted residents off the land and bulldozed the area last spring after offering shelter beds and other resources to those willing to take them. Mire and Jackson were informal leaders of the site, working with the Unhoused Community Activist Team (U‑ACT) to push for legalization of the encampment while advocating for basic resources like public bathrooms and storage units to support those experiencing housing instability. 

Many who lived in the encampment were not just experiencing homelessness, but addiction. Jackson said that while he believed the Tent City was an important way for individuals to exercise their right to public land in the face of a housing crisis and to create a system of care for one another in lieu of alternative support systems, the encampment also highlighted how the suffering of the city’s most vulnerable is often hidden in plain sight, or ​“swept under the rug.” 

While living at Tent City and organizing for housing rights, Jackson and Mire organized a group trip to a nearby church that was offering Narcan training in hopes it would serve their neighbors struggling with substance abuse. Not long after, Mire found herself reversing her first overdose on someone who had ​“turned swollen, black and blue,” inside their tent — something she would not have been prepared to do had she not attended that class.

Jackson said administering naloxone became a weekly event at the encampment. In the meantime, he claimed that workers with 211, who work with the Coordinated Access Network to get individuals into limited shelter beds and on housing waitlists, were quietly directing people with nowhere else to go to the encampment (multiple people at tent city told this reporter at the time that they had been directed there by 211, though Columbus House CEO Margaret Middleton previously denied that CAN representatives were doing so). 

It was only when U‑ACT launched last year, growing vocal about housing rights and speaking out about legitimizing the encampment, Jackson said, that the city cracked down on the three-year-old community, pointing to open fires and other hazardous heating sources, along with excessive debris, as ​“safety issues.” 

Jackson said it was hard for him not to interpret the situation as the city attempting to further quiet people already struggling in silence. 

Jackson has since found housing with his girlfriend and received a job organizing and interviewing New Haveners experiencing homelessness with the New Haven Housing Fund. But in the past three months, he said he’s personally known eight different people who overdosed on the streets of New Haven.

“Since Covid, more people are losing jobs, the housing crisis has increased, and the age-old cause of drugs and alcohol has resurfaced itself a hundred fold,” Jackson said. ​“At the same time, we’ve become afraid of just sitting next to each other due to disease spread; we’ve been pushed into the gutter of isolation.”

Jackson said he believes that sense of isolation has bred a collective consciousness of complacency, despair, and helplessness. Those on the streets are often just looking for another high, for a way to get through the day while feeling powerless to change their circumstances, Jackson said, as something as simple as shelter remains inaccessible to many. Others who have more stability, meanwhile, walk by people dying on sidewalks without taking action to intervene.

“People are just doing anything to feel a little bit better,” Jackson stated. ​“Everyone’s tired.”