LESSONS FROM THE EPICENTER. MY "RECOVERY" FROM BATTLING THE OPIOID CRISIS. And how you can do better.

by Jonathan Willis

For a long time, Montgomery County, Ohio carried a grim title—the worst place in the nation for opioid-related deaths. That wasn’t just a headline for me. That was my backyard. That was where I spent my career responding to calls that, more often than not, ended in heartbreak.

Over my years on the job, I responded to well over a thousand overdoses.
WELL over a thousand. (I've tried to do the math and stopped)
When I say that out loud, it barely seems possible. But every one of those calls was real—a kitchen floor, a gas station bathroom, a home with a room filled with bodies, a car that "randomly" rolled out of a parking lot into the middle of the street. I saw addiction, and accidental poisoning, and overdoses tear through families in every way imaginable. Parents burying children. Children burying parents. Siblings trying to make sense of it all.

For years, I told myself I was unaffected. I wore the armor, kept my tone dry, brushed off the weight of it. That was the defense mechanism—the survival instinct. We told ourselves, This is just the job. We told ourselves, These are people who chose the addict lifestyle. We told ourselves, Don’t get too close.
It was a lie.

We dehumanized people because it was the only way to create distance from the endless barrage of overdoses. The problem was, the distance wasn’t real. The calls kept coming and kept coming, and stuck with us. The faces didn’t go away. The grief still found cracks in the armor.  And in hindsight, I was wrong—wrong to believe that writing someone off was the only way to survive doing this work. And I was obviously affected. 

The truth is, everyone can be affected. Addiction isn’t confined to one neighborhood, one income bracket, or one “type” of person. Counterfeit drugs and fentanyl have been showing up in places no one expects—pressed into pills that look like common prescriptions, cut into powders people believe are something else entirely. People die who never had any intention of taking an opioid.

I’ve seen the early-onset dementia patient who forgot they’d already taken their medication. My first overdose ever, was an elderly lady with Fentanyl patches all over her.
Kids in their first-year of college are experimenting with a “harmless” party drugs, or taking a pill to stay up and study, and never waking up. Yeah, most of the people I was party to "bringing out" might have been "low life" by most measure. But what of the people who loved them? I’ve also seen people—good people—die because they simply didn’t know what they were holding in their hand.

Today, I work as a Harm Reduction Ohio Educator and a bulk Narcan distributor, and I’m doing my best to undo some of my own past mistakes. I teach people that these tragedies don’t just happen to “those people.” I give them the tools to recognize an overdose, to act quickly, to carry and use naloxone. I explain how fentanyl finds its way into drugs where it doesn’t belong, and why assuming it won’t happen here is the fastest way to be blindsided.

I can’t undo the thousand calls I already ran. I can’t bring back the people I couldn’t save. But I can honor the effort by making sure someone else is ready next time.
I can tell the truth about what this crisis looks like up close.
And maybe—just maybe—I can help one family avoid becoming another statistic. Remember, almost 100,000 people per year are STILL dying from overdose. It might behove you to be prepared.

Narcan In EVERY Kit!

If you carry a trauma kit, there’s a good chance it has a tourniquet, some gauze, maybe a chest seal. That’s a solid start. But in 2025, if it doesn’t also have naloxone—better known by the brand name Narcan—you’re missing a life-saving tool that’s as important as anything else in the bag.

We live in a time when opioid overdoses are not a fringe problem—they’re a daily reality. Fentanyl has changed the game. It’s not just in heroin anymore. It’s showing up in counterfeit prescription pills, cocaine, methamphetamine, and "mundane" party drugs—places it has no business being. People are dying who never meant to take an opioid in the first place. And the doses are so potent that just a couple grains too much can stop someone’s breathing in minutes.

You may be thinking, I don’t hang around drug users.
That’s fine—but it’s also irrelevant. Because this is bigger than “drug culture.” Overdoses happen in homes, at schools, in parking lots, at job sites, in bathrooms of nice restaurants. I’ve seen overdoses in people who looked like someone’s grandparent, in college students, in construction workers, in military veterans, and in professionals in their office bathroom or parking lots. It doesn’t matter if they intended to take an opioid or not—the result is the same if help doesn’t come fast.

Indications For Narcan Administration:    

1. Unresponsive to voice or touch
   
2. Pinpoint Pupils
3. Slow or absent breathing

Here’s why it belongs in your kit:

1. It works quickly. When given soon after an opioid overdose, Narcan can restore normal breathing in minutes—sometimes seconds.

2. It’s safe. If the person is not experiencing an opioid overdose, Narcan won’t harm them. You can’t “accidentally kill someone” by giving it.

3. It’s easy to use. The nasal spray versions require no medical training to operate—point, spray, and monitor the patient.

4. It’s legal. In most states, you can walk into a pharmacy and get Narcan without a prescription. In many places, it’s free through local health departments or harm reduction organizations.

5. It buys time. Even if EMS is on the way, Narcan can keep someone alive long enough for them to arrive.

I’ve used Narcan more times than I can count, and I can tell you this—when you watch someone go from blue and lifeless to breathing again, there’s no debate about whether it’s worth carrying. The cost is minimal, the space it takes up in your kit is small, and the potential upside is literally bringing a human being back from the brink of death.

If you choose to carry it, do it right:

• Store it somewhere accessible, not buried at the bottom of your bag.

• Know how to use it before you need it. The instructions are simple, but stress is real—practice.

• Some might suggest to carry two doses because Fentanyl overdoses often require more than one spray. If you can only carry one, that's fine. Get it on board and activate EMS, they'll have more. If you do have two, only give enough to restore respirations. Too many people are chasing consciousness, and end up in a fight or puked on because they gave too much too fast. In a "Good Samaritan" type application, getting much more than two doses administered should be unlikely, as you need to wait a solid 2 to 3 minutes between each dose. GIVE IT TIME TO WORK.

• After use, place the patient in the recovery position and  stay with them until EMS arrives, unless of course the environment becomes unsafe. Then get away and protect yourself. Scene safety trumps ALL.

We’ve reached a point where Narcan should be as normal to carry as a tourniquet. In the same way CPR and AED use have moved into civilian hands, opioid overdose reversal is no longer just a job for medics—it’s a job for all of us.

Lives are being lost in minutes. You can be the difference.