An Appreciation for Brattleboro’s First Responders is going to be held at Turning Point this Wednesday from 12 – 1 pm.
Due to the opioid crisis, these men and women have repeatedly brought people back from overdose.
According to reports, this past year has been especially busy, and at times trying. If you have time to celebrate their effort, and thank them for it, please come to this appreciation.
Doing something. . .
It is sometimes hard to know how to help the world be a better place, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed sometimes.
Here in Brattleboro, the latest wrinkle in the opioid crisis, is that the presence of fentanyl is helping cause many more overdoses than were previously happening.
Here is a link to a New York Times article on the national trend.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/02/upshot/fentanyl-drug-overdose-deaths.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Imagine, if you will, being responsible for bringing people back from overdoses, again, and again, week after week after week. Sometimes, its the same people being resuscitated, repeatedly. The meeting at Turning Point is meant as a chance to express our gratitude to those people who take on this difficult work. It is a small thing to offer gratitude perhaps, but also a big thing. My hope is that a lot folks from Brattleboro show up.
For those interested in learning more about the local crisis, there is also an event at the Brooks Memorial Library this week (you have to love our library) on the nature of addiction. The presentation is called, ” Why Don’t They Just Stop? Ways to Think About and Talk About Addiction” on Wednesday the 27th of September, at 5:30 to 7 pm.