People enjoyed grilled hot dogs, bottled water and chips during an International Overdose Awareness Day barbecue in Monroe Park on Aug. 31, while also learning about harm reduction services benefiting Eugene and Lane County. 
Outreach personnel at two nonprofits, Black Thistle Street Aid and Community Outreach through Radical Empowerment, handed out food, stickers, lanyards and harm reduction products like naloxone, Narcan spray, drug-testing kits and clean syringes. 
International Overdose Awareness Day is an annual campaign to bring awareness to and stop drug overdose. Events are held all over the world on Aug. 31 to help spread information and resources about curbing overdoses.

County health, housing and addiction treatment service providers chatted with community members at tables around the park’s edge. 

Mary Kate Coy and Ethan DeGhelder sat at one table representing Looking Glass New Roads, a community service organization that offers specialized treatment programs and counseling for adolescents in recovery in Lane County, as well as an alternative educational program tailored to meet the needs of runaway and homeless youth. 

People have to appear sober in order to stay at the Looking Glass overnight shelter, and it can be challenging for using adolescents to find a safe place to “return to their baseline” without having to interact with law enforcement, DeGhelder said. 

Addiction is a major barrier to housing and employment services for adolescents, Coy said. They are increasingly at risk of overdose in the United States. According to UCLA Health, each year since 2010, about 500 adolescents aged 14 to 18 years old died of some form of overdose. But in 2020, that figure rose sharply to 954. In 2021, it increased to 1,146. 

One of the outreach personnel at the barbecue was Marty Nelms, a peer outreach specialist at Ideal Option, an outpatient clinic that provides medication-assisted addiction treatment to people struggling with alcohol, methamphetamine and opioid addictions. 

Its five Oregon clinics have treated nearly 1,800 patients since 2018. Fifty percent of Ideal Options’ clients have already overdosed and are receiving treatment to recover from overdose and withdrawal symptoms, Nelms said. 

After struggling with addiction, Nelms has been drug free for three years. One of the medication-assisted addiction treatments that worked for him is suboxone, a low-level opioid mixed with an opioid antagonist. When used, it blocks opioid receptors in the brain, blunting intoxication and reducing cravings for more opiates. 

Untreated opioid addiction is the main driver of high overdose statistics in the U.S. Opioid related overdose deaths accounted for 68,630 or nearly 75%, of total overdose deaths in 2020, according to the CDC. 

To make matters worse, many opioids sold on the street are no longer just pure heroin or morphine, but are often cut with fentanyl, he said.

“Fentanyl is an equal opportunity killer,” Nelms said. “When I got clean, most of the people in the clinic were longtime users, people who’d been living on the street. I’m amazed at how different the socioeconomic status of users is now.”

Lane County is especially affected by the opioid epidemic. According to Ideal Option, nearly one in five Lane County residents have an opioid prescription in the first quarter of 2020, which is 14% higher than the statewide opioid prescription rate.

With fentanyl overdose becoming such a common threat to public safety, Black Thistle, CORE, Ideal Option and the several other community health services in Eugene are all pushing to get naloxone, Narcan and fentanyl testing kits into community hands. 

Naloxone and Narcan are both opioid antagonists, meaning they can reverse the effects of overdose in administered patients. When someone experiencing overdose inhales Narcan or is injected with naloxone, the drug will block the opioid receptors in the brain and return the patient’s slowed breathing to a normal rate in two to three minutes, according to the CDC.
Clean needles and naloxone are available to the public at a variety of sites in Eugene. They are listed on the nonprofit White Bird Clinic’s website.