A sticker sits in a box of naloxone, T-shirts and other items to give out during Save a Life Day. (Photo courtesy of Kyra Kearse)
When Kyra Kearse first visited a pharmacy to pick up free boxes of the overdose reversal drug naloxone, she had a flashback to herself five years earlier, when she was buying drugs and living on the street.
“How many do you want?” the pharmacist asked her in December about naloxone, often known by the name brand Narcan.
Counties with groups participating in Save a Life Day
Source: SOAR West Virginia
“How many can you give me?” Kearse replied.
Kearse, who works with other people in recovery and is approved to distribute large amounts of naloxone, organized Save a Life Day events Thursday in York and Chester counties to hand out free boxes of the medication, which can reverse an opioid overdose.
Originally started in West Virginia, Save a Life Day has grown from two counties in West Virginia to events in every state, including a dozen counties in South Carolina, according to its website.
The event comes as overdose deaths decreased for a second year in South Carolina, though officials have warned that new drugs are deadlier, and some are less responsive or not at all responsive to naloxone.
Many of the organizations participating offer free naloxone throughout the year, organizers said. Save a Life Day, which looks different depending on the county, gives treatment centers and nonprofits a chance to highlight the medication’s significance and correct common misconceptions, organizers said.
The medication is provided free of charge through grants from the South Carolina Opioid Recovery Fund, which is responsible for doling out the more than $360 million the state is expected to receive from a $26 billion settlement legal settlement with three of the nation’s primary drug distributors.
York and Chester counties
Kearse, who lives in Rock Hill, picked up 300 naloxone kits Thursday morning, many of which she will distribute among nonprofits, such as Pathways Community Center and Keystone Substance Abuse Services. The rest, Kearse will offer to people living in homeless encampments, she said.
After spending five years homeless and addicted to drugs, Kearse is intimately familiar with the way addiction and homelessness go hand in hand, she said. Despite the prevalence of addiction among people who are homeless, encampments often lack access to life-saving drugs like naloxone, she said.
“I’ve never seen a drug take away a person’s life the way fentanyl and meth do,” Kearse said. “The devil is at work, but God works harder.”
Kearse also traveled to neighboring Chester County to drop off free naloxone at the Hazel Pittman Center, a nonprofit meant to help treat addiction, she said. Chester County doesn’t have a formal Save a Life Day event scheduled, but the treatment center hosted a conference about how to reduce the use of opioids, which will hopefully mean more efforts year-round, Kearse said.
Charleston County
In Charleston County, nonprofits, law enforcement and county employees planned to hand out naloxone at six different locations, said Sarah Halse, opioid initiative coordinator for the county-run Charleston Center. The county also staged pop-ups in the more rural parts of the county, she said.
A worker unloads Charleston Center’s van. (Photo courtesy of Sarah Halse)
The county, which offers naloxone for free all year, has hundreds of kits to give out, Halse said.
“We’re really just out here trying to raise awareness, reduce stigma and educate the community,” Halse said.
Anderson and Spartanburg counties
Palmetto Carolina Treatment Center in Duncan had about 200 boxes of naloxone available for pickup Thursday, and Southwest Carolina Treatment Center in Anderson had about 250, said Candace Latimer, a program director for Carolina Treatment Centers, in an email.
While Save a Life Day is a way to highlight resources such as naloxone, the centers have naloxone available for free every day and are looking for ways to get more of it into the hands of people who might need it, Latimer said.
The centers are also working to raise awareness at local schools, businesses and other community groups about naloxone and what it does, with the goal of continuing to decrease the number of overdose deaths, she said.
“By empowering individuals with the knowledge and tools to act in critical moments, we are making strides toward a safer and healthier community,” Latimer said.
Hampton, Jasper and Allendale counties
New Life Center is holding off on its official event in Hampton County until Saturday to align with Varnville’s Celebrating Small Town America Festival, said Emily Ginn, a peer support specialist for the addiction recovery service.
Community distributor and peer support advisor Kyra Kearse holds a box of naloxone for Save a Life Day. (Photo courtesy of Kyra Kearse)
The group wanted to go where people would already be, Ginn said. The Save a Life Day distributions will be part of a larger resource fair involving other nonprofits offering different sorts of help, she said.
People visiting for other resources can then pick up some naloxone and pass on the goodwill, Ginn said.
“If Narcan isn’t the way to help save your life, it could be the way to save someone else’s life, and the next thing could be the way to save your life,” Ginn said. “We all have struggles.”
Ginn will bring 78 boxes of naloxone, with the goal of handing out all of them. She also helped organize distributions in Allendale and Jasper counties, also under New Life Center’s service area, last weekend at similar resource fairs.
Between the two counties, the outpatient service center handed out nearly 100 naloxone kits, an impressive number for the small, rural communities, Ginn said.
Already, that’s more than quadruple what New Life Center gave out last year during its inaugural Save a Life Day, which Tropical Storm Helene forced the center to reschedule, she said.
‘There’s still hope’
Save a Life Day carries personal significance to Ginn, who has been in recovery for four years after 20 years of active addiction. Although she never had naloxone used on her, she saw it save friends’ lives during overdoses, she said.
A sticker provided with a Save a Life Day kit for York County. (Photo courtesy of Kyra Kearse)
When people don’t want to take a naloxone kit because of the stigma around drug use or because they think it enables addiction, telling them her own history of addiction often helps change their mind, she said.
Having naloxone on hand and not needing it is better than needing it and not having it, Ginn and other organizers said. And it doesn’t enable anything but breathing in a person having an overdose, they said.
There’s no saying what might be a person’s tipping point that causes them to get sober, Ginn said. Addicts are people, too, and their lives are worth saving, she added.
Seeing people in every state committed to giving out free naloxone “means there’s still hope in our society and our nation,” Ginn said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of something so big.”
Ginn never saw herself working in addiction recovery, but after three years working for the same treatment center where she was once a patient, she’s striving to do everything she can to help people in similar situations, she said.
“It just fills my heart with so much joy because there’s that chance of someone’s life being saved who is where I was at,” Ginn said.