Naloxone

‘[It] is not a pleasant experience. It takes all the drugs out, so you go into instant withdrawal. I can remember coming round and feeling really ill – cold, shivering, aching. But without it I would have died.’

This is how former drug user Karl Price from Birmingham, UK, described being injected with naloxone. Price had overdosed on heroin in a public toilet and slipped into a semiconscious state. The opioid was flooding his system, causing his breathing to slow. Had his friend not administered the life-saving antidote, he would have suffocated. Price’s experience reflects that of thousands of other drug users that have been saved by naloxone from an otherwise fatal overdose.