Anyone Can Save A Life

International Overdose Awareness Day is August 31. The United States had a record 93,000 overdose deaths in 2020. Deaths from opioid overdose are preventable. Anyone can save a life if they know how to respond.

CPL is excited to host the Overdose Prevention and Response with Chicago Recovery Alliance (CRA) virtual event Tuesday, August 31 at 11:00 a.m.

CRA will provide training in opioid-involved overdose prevention and response. Opioid-involved overdose death has become a major health crisis. Laypeople with no medical training whatsoever can easily, safely, and legally be trained to save the life of someone who is experiencing an opioid overdose. This training is designed for people who work in social service or who might witness an overdose. Friends, family, community members and people who use drugs are also welcome.

For more information about opioid abuse, check out the these titles:

Overcoming Opioid Addiction provides information and guidance from a leading addiction expert to understanding, treating, and overcoming opioid use disorder.

With personal stories and persuasive data, The Opioid Fix dispels myths and misunderstandings about the use of medications to treat opioid addiction.

Award winning journalist Beth Macy’s Dopesick connects the community devastation of the opioid crisis to corporate greed and regulatory maleficence. This investigative nonfiction is the inspiration for the upcoming drama miniseries of the same name on Hulu.

A three-part history of the opioid epidemic, American Overdose charts how relentless greed led the pharmaceutical industry to hook the nation on highly addictive painkillers.

Written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Death in Mud Lick is the story of a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, that distributed 12 million opioid pain pills in three years to a town with a population of 382 people.

This Is Ohio contextualizes the opioid crisis as a human rights problem fostered by poverty and inadequate healthcare. This book profiles a coalition of addicts, mothers, and allies and their grassroots effort to combat the dehumanization of addicts and instead focus on saving lives through commonsense harm reduction policies.

The Opioid Epidemic is a definitive guide to understanding the epidemic and arming readers with information backed by science and evidence to help themselves, their loved ones, and their communities.

Written with diverse perspectives, American Epidemic is a collection of newspaper reports, excerpts from recent books, magazine articles and scholarly research on the current opioid epidemic.