Public overdoses and my friend is a lifesaving superhero at a all-day-breakfast restaurant.

What were you up to at 3AM? Oh, just looking for an article about the increase in public overdoses of opioids and what that says about the power of addiction, the danger of the fentanyl-laced drug, and the will of people to, despite their dire state, be saved.I couldn't find the specific article, but I promise it exists and this is not an academic publication so sue me. The NYT article below about availability of Narcan as a health and safety measure like CPR training and AEDs in public places is good, too. I'm for it because I'm for life saving.I’m going to tell someone else’s story; I’ve asked permission. This happened recently. Of the six of you who read this five probably know her. To know her is to love her, get ready to love this too, especially if you’re nursey and can do that thing we do where we care about people to a degree that we dedicate our lives to them but at our core lies a daaaark and morbid sense of humor.So our friend is a recent PhD in nursing. A person who commiserated with me in when I was walking in the valley of clinical care is scary gross by saying “I knew it wasn’t for me the first time I emptied a peritoneal dialysis bag.” She’s an empath to the nth degree. Terrifically gifted in the field of psychology. Destined to be great to innumerable patients and, if there is justice, the wider field of psych/nursing/medicine. She is however not into emergency or critical care.She’s in a medium sized city in the south, enjoying her favorite breakfast-all-day chain restaurant with her man, just having given their orders to their waiter who looks exactly like you would expect a breakfast-all-day chain restaurant waiter to look. The youngish ones. In the kitchen there is a commotion being made. Staff is peeling away from the dining room, forming a crowd. SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING is hollered. Our friend, the gifted psych nurse, is getting a look from her man (also a doctor of not medicine).IS ANYONE HERE A DOCTOR?Shit.She’s getting the go get ‘em tiger from her fella. She rises, whispers to the backs of the crowd “I’m a nurse.”“SHE’S A NURSE” Hollers her dude with the authoritative bass of a public lecturer. The sea of people parts.It’s their waiter, passed out on the floor of the breakfast-all-day restaurant kitchen. She is hella smart, so clinical person or not she can handle an OD. She activates that emergency response system (call 911, damn it), asks for an AED (there is none--what?!), checks that carotid pulse for not more than ten seconds (absent), and starts high quality chest compressions times thirty at a rate of not less than one hundred per minute with two rescue breaths between cycles.Woman saved a life, people. SHE SAVED A LIFE.EMS comes in narcannons blazing and brings the victim back. Poof. Death-be-gone.Sigh. So that is our girl. My girl. My nurse friend and mentor. It feels good to know someone this gangster.In summation: the opioid crisis is real, everyone must learn CPR, Narcan should be in first aid kits, and let's address institutional cycle of poverty creating helplessness and hopelessness in economically depressed areas such as the stripped-bare resource colonies of the southeast leading to physical manifestations of what might be at the root existential disability and the introduction of opioids.[embed]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/us/opioids-narcan-drug-overdose-heroin-fentanyl.html[/embed]