LISTEN UP –
Oct. 29, 2024 – In my sophomore year, I was attending a relatively large alternative high school in Seattle. It was April 2022, and a friend had taken fentanyl and was actively overdosing directly across from the school’s entrance. I had no idea what to do — I had never dealt with such an urgent situation.
There are obvious problems here, though. The school had no Narcan in supply — Washington law dictates that high schools carry Narcan. Administrators and counselors weren’t always vigilant in helping students in use. We weren’t educated or aware that our friend wouldn’t get arrested for overdosing; we didn’t know about Washington’s good Samaritan Law, which protected people like me in this situation.
Ultimately, another student there that day — the one who asked me to go to the nurse’s office — was failed. They died of a fentanyl overdose only a few months later.
