How this organization in Hamilton helps men get clean — and turn their lives around

A couple of months ago, my dad and I participated in a walkathon in Hamilton with a guy named Carl, who told me that he had once died.

Carl has spent too much of his life addicted to all kinds of things that just aren’t good for you. About five years ago, his drug dealer sold him a particularly bad batch of fentanyl. He collapsed, turned blue, and died right in front of his dealer. One of his buddies tried smacking his face to revive him, but that didn’t work. Then someone gave him a shot of naloxone which can reverse the effects of an overdose, but that didn’t work either. The last hope was to perform CPR in hopes of getting the medication to work, and son of a gun, that did the trick.

“I came to, and my dealer laughed about it after,” Carl said. He says his friend actually tried to get him to do more fentanyl afterward, but Carl had the good sense to throw the guy out of his apartment.

Carl then recalled another time he needed artificial respiration, and his buddy joked, “Last time I gave you a kiss, at least you had fresh breath!” […] This is an excerpt. Read the full article at TVO.