AN OD REVIVAL STORY

What To Do If Your Friend Turns Blue? Try Narcan.

Jewels tells his overdose story to anyone who will listen. He hobbles back
and forth along an asphalt pathway in Tompkins Square Park, wearing
battered cowboy boots and a CBGB T-shirt held together with safety pins.
Friends slouch on a bench nearby, taking turns gulping from a bottle of
Colt 45. Few bother listening; they've already heard this story too many times.

"I OD'd on the same dope," Jewels, 35, says, referring to rumors that a bad
batch of heroin might have caused the deaths of six people, including two
college students who died in an apartment six blocks away. "They brought me
back [to life] four times. Twice here, once in the ambulance, and once in
the hospital. When I left the hospital, I was still high."

That afternoon started like any other, with Jewels hanging out in Tompkins
Square Park. But then he suddenly collapsed. His friends-many of whom were
high or drunk or both-started screaming and crying. Someone tried to do
CPR, but he had Jewels's head position all wrong. Another person took over.
Jewels's friend Shaun grabbed a cell phone and called 911.

"He was blue and gasping for air," Shaun says. "I opened his mouth and he
was biting his tongue." Another friend pulled a syringe filled with Narcan
out of his backpack and handed it to Shaun, who grabbed Jewels's arm and
stuck the needle in his bicep. That injection may have saved Jewels's life.
He opened his eyes and began to tremble, and soon an ambulance arrived.

Narcan, which is also known by the generic name naloxone, can reverse a
heroin over-dose by blocking its effect on the brain. It is routinely used
by doctors and paramedics, and it has long been dispensed to heroin addicts
in Europe. Last year, needle-exchange programs in New York City started
offering a class on how to use Narcan, with a doctor on-site to hand out
prescriptions. Each attendee receives two pre-filled syringes.

Ten needle-exchange programs now participate, and so far 500 people have
received Narcan. Those who use up their supply can return for a refill.
According to the Harm Reduction Coalition, there have been 45
"reversals"-instances in which Narcan was used to stop an overdose and save
a life. One participant in the course at the Lower East Side Harm Reduction
Center was Jewels's friend Shaun.

"If anyone is going to help us, it's going to be us," Shaun, 28, says.
"I've been using dope since I was 15, so why not learn how to save my
friends?" Shaun has been clean for a year, but perhaps one of the reasons
he is such a vocal Narcan proponent is because it saved his life, too. Last
year, he says, he overdosed in East River Park, then regained consciousness
after an acquaintance injected him.

The recent spate of overdose deaths has been a favorite subject of debate
among the regulars in this park. Was it tainted heroin-or heroin that's
extra pure? Or was it a lethal mix of cocaine and heroin? Narcan is only
effective if a user overdoses on opiates, including heroin, methadone, and
OxyContin. It is not effective if the heroin is laced with poison, and it
doesn't help reverse the effects of cocaine.

Jewels has no way of knowing whether his most recent overdose has any
connection to the city's highly publicized cluster of drug deaths. But by
the time he returned to Tompkins Square Park after leaving the hospital, he
had a new tattoo: four small dots under his left eye, one for each time he
regained consciousness. He already had a tattoo on his face, but he made a
point of showing everybody this latest one.