Paul Bass photo
Fire crew carries a K2 victim from the Green.
(Opinion) One year later, the memory of chilling emergency calls from the New Haven Green, describing more, more, and still more overdose cases, stirs an emotional response.
One year later, New Haven first responders still deserve high praise and full credit for their successful efforts to help scores of these people who had overdosed after smoking synthetic marijuana.
Over three days last August more than 100 overdose patients were transported to local hospitals and resuscitated; some were transported again after earlier resuscitation. None perished, and for that the first responders are to be commended.
We convened an Overdose Response Task Force shortly thereafter and have co-chaired its monthly meetings since. Its approximately two-dozen members represent entities ranging from treatment providers and the New Haven business community to the state Department of Corrections and the city’s health department; from first responders to federal agencies, and from recovery organizations to ministers and pastors from the faith community.
One year later, attendance and participation of its interdisciplinary members remains exemplary.
While its primary intention is prevention of another, comparable episode, the task force uses last summer’s experience and the expertise of task force members to prepare for that possibility. Should anything like it happen again, those with responsibility to react now have an increased sensitivity to the nature of addiction – and the needs of a person with a substance use disorder who is in crisis.
Similarly, increased awareness and sensitivity to the nature of Substance Use Disorder (SUD) – the clinical name for addiction – will help all involved: treatment providers, agencies meant to help the afflicted, those who staff these entities, and those family members and loved ones impacted by people in need.
Task force members have zeroed in on street-level outreach programs to improve communications among those who need assistance and those who can provide it. As Johann Hari, a Swiss-British writer and journalist who specializes on the topic, describes it: “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.”
With that in mind, a sustained, comprehensive, local program to echo the “Live Loud” initiative of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) is in place in New Haven, enlisting outreach workers, the business community, city staff, and members of the Board of Alders, to connect the individuals with available services.
In addition, New Haven is now using “heat maps” to digitally track comparatively isolated, yet continuing overdose incidents so efforts to guard against them can be directed as needed.
The task force plan is to engage on the streets of New Haven, and then scale up from there to disseminate to other cities and towns a tested and effective outreach, communication, and engagement strategy.
We know very well the challenges people with SUD face; we’re even more familiar with the challenges society faces trying to help these people, provide services for their recovery, and protect others from substance misuse or abuse.
We know more and more people who need help with SUD emerge every day: it’s said addiction to prescribed pain medication can happen in as few as five days, and that as many as 80 percent of those who use heroin were first addicted to pain medication.
We also know many people who successfully live full lives in recovery. They have chosen one of the many pathways to recover. We embrace the grassroots work of the task force as members support offering recover services where people are, engaging them so recovery can be their reality.
All of us in Connecticut face an uphill climb working to address these issues. We’re extremely proud of the coordinated response of this task force to pave the way to make it easier for New Haven – and other jurisdictions statewide – to try and prevent the experience New Haven had one year ago.
New Haven Mayor Toni Harp and state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services Commissioner Miriam Delphin-Rittmon are the co-chairs of the city’s Overdose Response Task Force.