Responders Dealing with Drug Overdoses

The Fond du Lac area was not seeing many reported overdose issues for the first half of 2018 – but concern went up along with the numbers after a spike in July. There were several calls for first responders to help with overdose victims last month, and one of them ended in a fatality. 

Fire Chief Peter O’Leary has been on the scene for some of these cases – and he points out that Narcan helps, but it’s not always the perfect solution. He says “I don’t know if there was a more potent distribution of heroin in the area, it seems like that might be the case. But if you know somebody that’s using, having Narcan nearby isn’t a bad thing – but it’s not a prevention tool, it’s a survival tool. And it doesn’t always catch at the right time. You walk out of the room, you leave, fall asleep – and it’s too late.”

O’Leary adds that there are a lot of skeptics when it comes to drug addiction, but “we go to help people. They call, we come, we help. We try to sustain
people’s lives. And we don’t get in the judgment business, we don’t try to
figure things out or get political – it’s not a political thing to us. It’s
about going to help people and care for people who are less fortunate than us.
And that’s what we do.”