International Overdose Awareness Day

International Overdose Awareness Day

Dear friends,

Today in the US, there's already been a huge burst of activity in support of Overdose Awareness Day. Rallies & press conferences are happening in places like San Francisco and Hartford. Op-eds about Overdose Awareness Day are running on blogs & websites like Alternet.
People from around the world have been "tweeting" on Twitter for hours using the tag #od10 in their messages about overdose. And candlelight vigils are being held in dozens of communities tonight.

Thousands of people are coming together today to remember the lives of people they loved and still miss desperately. People are coming together in sorrow and grief, helping each other heal; people are coming together in frustration and anger, demanding their local government make naloxone available and pass a Good Samaritan 911 policy to make it safe for people to call for help if they witness an overdose. People come together in dozens of different ways today--to achieve different things, to remember different people--but all fundamentally for the same thing:

To draw attention to the fact that overdose death is preventable if we actually DO something about it.

Do you have teenagers? Do they know the deadliest combinations of drugs and alcohol? Do you? Do they know what to do if they see someone overdosing? Do you? Do they know what naloxone is and how it's used to save someone overdosing on an opiate like heroin or OxyContin? Do you?

The only way we can get our hands around the overdose crisis is to teach ourselves and our loved ones how to prevent, recognize and respond to an overdose--and to demand our legislators pass policies that make it safe for people to call for lifesaving help without fearing arrest. We can urge Congress to take action on the Drug Overdose Reduction Act. We can ask our local public health department if naloxone is available and if not, how can you make that happen?

I encourage you to check the Purple Ribbons for Overdose Prevention Facebook Cause page frequently. You'll find recent stories in the news about overdose, as well as links to actions you can take to help reduce overdose fatalities. You'll find people grieving their loved ones and posting stories about them as a tribute. You can be more involved with people just like you who care about this issue.

Meghan Ralston, cause creator