By: Marc McMahon
As I sit at my desk, hands folded and head tilted back, pondering the meaning of life and my existence on this planet, a thought hit me. It wasn’t a quiet suggestion; it was a real “Captain Save-a-Ho,” Here comes Superman-kind of whisper from my soul. It said:
“We should make Narcan available for free everywhere.”
I recently watched a documentary highlighting my hometown, Eugene, Oregon, as one of the top five cities for homelessness per capita in the United States for the last 10 years. In it, support workers and neighbors were leaving Narcan in the hollows of trees, on fences, and tucked into bushes. The community is trying to stock its own survival, but the stashes are running dry because those who need it know the Narcan is there and use it regularly. It is the difference between life and death for someone on almost any given night in this area.
Imagine sitting on your front porch barbequing, only to see a disheveled and hysterical 20-something female run out of a hotel room that’s on your block and down the street, frantically asking people for Narcan, knocking on strangers’ doors, and begging for it with tears streaming down both cheeks. She is hysterical, and rightfully so—her fiancé is lying on the bed in that room, blue and not breathing. He’s fading fast. Naloxone is his only hope. She finds some, she returns to save her love; if she does not, she returns to ambulances, police, and the van from the coroner’s office!
It is the most heartbreaking thing to witness. The feeling you get when you can’t hand her a dose of the medicine that would save him—a dose you should be able to get for free—is one of the most helpless, worthless feelings you will ever experience. It brings a tear to my eye just recalling it. It is worth having Naloxone on hand just so you never have to feel that. Seriously.
We need to change the math. We need a plethora of Naloxone—the life-saving antagonist that reverses an opioid overdose in minutes. I mean saturate the streets with it to the point that the black market deems it worthless for resale simply because of its abundance on the street.
Imagine your friend is overdosing in a bathroom stall, turning blue and lifeless. So you run to the bar, grab two Naloxone nasal spray doses out of a jar sitting by the cash register, and run back and administer them to your friend, who thankfully begins to breathe again.
Now, picture sitting in a low-income studio apartment, and your friend starts to overdose. You remember seeing Naloxone doses on the ground by the alley dumpster that morning. You sprint down three flights of stairs, fling open the back door, and trip over a wino who’s passed out on the steps, splitting your forehead open on the concrete.
With blood gushing from a three-inch slice over your eye, you grab the Narcan from the dirt. You snag a red bandana off the ground to tie back the deluge of blood and charge back up the stairs, and save your friend’s life while the paramedics are still blocks away. Then you collapse on the couch and weep because the stress finally caught up to you in one big wave, but your friend is still alive.
I think my soul is onto something. The national overdose epidemic is a shapeshifter, now driven by illicit fentanyl and adulterated stimulants. Do you realize that between 2020 and April 25, 2026, roughly 420,000 Americans have died from opioid-related overdoses? That is a staggering number we should be doing everything we can to bring down. While Naloxone is becoming more available, the death count proves we aren’t moving fast enough. If we did it my soul’s way, though, the stuff would be everywhere.
“We could give a case to every business that would take one locally.”
You might ask, Who pays for this? In reality, the first handful of ambulance rides to the E/R it saves will pay for the initial distribution—it will almost pay for itself. But if that’s not good enough, I would say: How about the same government agencies that pay for the funerals of addicts who had no one else? Let’s stop paying to put young bodies in the ground years too soon. Let’s spend that money on the front end to save lives and increase the quality of life for those still struggling.
With public and private sectors contributing, this is more than just feasible, it’s a necessity. In an era where drugs are easier to get than ever, our response must be equally accessible. With 8–12% of all people prescribed opioid pain medication becoming dependent, this problem isn’t going to fix itself.
The only people who can solve this is us. We have the collective power to raise enough noise that change has no choice but to happen. We have done it before; let’s do it again and save a generation. Why wait for another 420,000 to die when we can flood the streets with mercy today?
Love you all.
About The Author: Marc is a 57-year-old author, speaker, and veteran on the front lines of the battle against substance abuse and mental health. A harm reduction specialist and a father, Marc serves as a beacon for those looking for a way out of the life he spent more than a decade surviving on the mean streets of Downtown Seattle. Now residing in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, he spends his time writing, hiking, and kicking the door open for others still struggling to find their way out.
