Serendipity

Life unfolded in a beautiful way today.

I'm project manager for a drug overdose prevention video that trains users, outreach workers, and human services workers how to administer naloxone, an opiate inhibitor that can prevent an opiate (heroin, vicodin, oxycontin) overdose. To educate myself and to keep the content true to the topic, I attended a narloxone training course this morning in Bushwick, a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn. Popular assumption about heroin overdose and its antidote has been shaped by representations of use in films such as Pulp Fiction.

Now I am certified to administer naloxone in the event someone overdoses on drugs from the opioid drug class.

At the training there were outreach workers sharing their knowledge as former addictsof opiate overdose. A former user told me how she was a "functional housewife" while addicted to heroin. The director spoke to me of how his three brothers died from heroin overdose and explained his own experience OD-ing before going clean.

So what to do with this new skill? Maybe I should volunteer at a shelter where clients sometimes overdose.

I put the thought out there.

A few minutes later during a meeting for another video project, I shared my experience with a high level colleague. She told me that her husband runs a shelter. After another meeting, the same woman encouraged me to contact her husband. Then I pitched a project to my surprise she had been longing herself to fufill: a real physician answering real questions online about sexual health.