South Heidelberg woman plans Narcan training -- how to save overdose victims

by Steve Reinbrecht

Police chiefs in Southwestern Berks have told me they don’t see much crime involving opioids – highly addictive painkilling drugs like heroin, oxycontin and percocet.

The Berks coroner’s office lists only three opioid-related overdoses in the area since the beginning of 2014, and two of those deaths were men who lived at the state-run correctional center off Penn Avenue just west of Wernersville.

Brenda Allen, who lives in South Heidelberg, doesn’t buy this.

She said the problem is as rampant here as anywhere.

“There’s tons more [deaths in the area]. … It’s a pandemic across the country.”

Allen has started a group to educate parents about the dangers of drug abuse. Her son, Jimmy, 26, has been recovering from opiate addiction for two years. He stopped using drugs in prison, she said.

She and her group, Not One More, have planned an event at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 31, at the West Reading Fire Department, Station 64.

Aug. 31 is International Overdose Awareness Day.

Allen plans to give a training on how to use nasal naloxone –a spray up the nose designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdose. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it in November.

Allen asks that people who want a free naloxone kit to contact her by Tuesday to reserve one.

NotOneMoreSEPA@gmail.com

Emergency responders told me the spray is effective and easy to use. One told me a benefit is that it’s safe to use even if a person is not having an overdose, so responders can administer it quickly even when an overdose is only suspected.

In March, Bern Township police used the drug to revive a man at Blue Marsh, the Reading Eagle reported.

Allen said she’s heard of two overdoses in the area this summer -- a woman finding her grandson dead in the bathroom, and a young woman found blue and dying in her bedroom.

Western Berks Ambulance officials have not returned requests for comment.

Many drug-related deaths are recorded as heat attacks or organ failure, Allen believes. She thinks there is official pressure on some crime fighters who don’t want it to appear as a big problem, she said.

Allen’s “Not One More” chapter, which began meeting in May, meets in the YMCA just west of Sinking Spring from 8 to 9 p.m. on the last Tuesday of the month.

For one thing, Allen wants to educate parents on the signs of addiction. Missing cotton balls or Q-tips is a clue, as users use cotton to filter the mixture before sucking it up in a syringe. Too much time in the bathroom is a sign. Allen said he son thanked her for cleaning his room before he was addicted, but after he was hooked, he got mad at her if she cleaned it.