Drug overdoses now routine in Maine

A close friend, driving one of Maine’s suburban roads, came upon an accident scene. A maroon SUV was stopped on a grass median. Police were trying to save the life of the unconscious young man lying on the grass.

The driver had overdosed on drugs. The police were acting to save his life. One officer, using a special nasal injector, administered into the young man an overdose blocker called Narcan. Within moments, the driver came to. Did he thank the police for saving his life? No, he screamed at the officer for “ruining his high.”

That was the first time I’d heard of someone angry with the person who saved their life. It was such a disconnect, I had a hard time coming to terms with it.

But not many weeks after my friend shared his story, I was attending a birthday party. Several guests were medical professionals. Sitting at the table across from me was a woman introduced as Betty. After several minutes of listening to Betty conversing with others, I asked if she was an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT).

“No,” she said, “I am an emergency room doctor.” Emergency room doctors are a special breed. Emergency rooms are the entry point for hospital patients with all sorts of maladies, including life threatening maladies. Emergency room doctors are tasked with doing their best to make sure very sick people stay alive.

“What’s different about working in an emergency room today compared with ten years ago?” I asked Betty. She said she deals with more drug overdoses than she used to.

What’s more, she’s treating patients overdosed on varied, unknown combinations of drugs. Drugs mixed with God knows what. Having to first decode unknown substances to save a life makes a tough job tougher.

Betty told me of a police officer in a coma. Investigating a car involved in a drug case the officer rested the palm of his bare hands on a powdery substance on the car seat. Whatever was in that powder worked its way through the officer’s skin, into his body, and he’s now in a coma.

She is using more Narcan in the emergency room. It wasn’t that way ten years ago. In some cases it takes seven doses of Narcan to save one patient.

I asked, “What happens to people who overdose after you save them in the emergency room?” The answer is, if they revive, if the Narcan succeeds in blocking the overdose, the patient leaves the hospital.

Again, I had to know I was hearing correctly. I repeated an expanded version of my question. “A person overdoses on drugs and arrives at the hospital emergency room unconscious. You give them Narcan, prevent them dying, and they can just walk out?”

Before I finish asking the question, Betty and other medical professionals are shaking their heads up-and-down.

“They aren’t required to speak with a drug counselor? Law enforcement?” I ask.

No. If they haven’t broken any laws, hospitals can’t hold them. They’re free to go.

How often can the same person overdose, show up in the hospital emergency room, have their life saved by the emergency room attending physician, and then just walk back out onto the street?

There is no limit. Hospitals, by law, must receive and treat sick people.

Between the overdosed driver story and the emergency room story, I had a visit from a friend who runs a Maine crematorium. “How’s business?” I asked half jokingly. My friend lowered his shaking head. “Busy,” he said, adding. “I’m getting a lot of young people.”

“Car accidents?” I asked.

“Drug overdoses.”

Scott K. Fish has served as a communications staffer for Maine Senate and House Republican caucuses, and was communications director for Senate President Kevin Raye. He founded and edited AsMaineGoes.com and served as director of communications/public relations for Maine’s Department of Corrections until 2015. He is now using his communications skills to serve clients in the private sector.