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A “bad batch” of methamphetamine gave workers at Prairie Harm Reduction (PHR) quite the scare Thursday afternoon.
Now, executive director Jason Mercredi said he is worried more may be circulating on the streets of Saskatoon.
“We just had an individual who thought they were taking crystal meth,” he said. “They came in and used, and they started overdosing. Our paramedic and our peer support worker jumped into play and started administering naloxone, and then called for additional staff.”
Mercredi said he and those helping out were doing continuous nasal naloxone, and naloxone injections on repeat until the individual came to.
“It took quite a bit, and a lot of chest compressions. The most I’ve had to do before this was nine. Now, this time, we had to do 27 (shots) of naloxone. It just shows the potency of the drugs out there right now,” he said.
Mercredi said the incident occurred around 3 p.m., when the safe consumption site was closing for the day. With the doors now closed until 10:30 a.m. Friday, there’s a worry the calls for overdose may continue across the city Thursday night.
“That person had got their drugs shortly before they came in,” Mercredi said. “They came into our facility, so now we’re closing up shop and there’s a poisonous drug batch out there on the street.
“We’ve let our community partners know, so they can notify folks and just try and get the word out there. The big thing is we don’t want people to be using alone.”
The “poisonous batch” was described in a tweet by PHR on Thursday afternoon.
***YXE Public Drug Notice***
Pink crystal meth – heavily laced with fentanyl
27 shots of naloxone on one individual.— prairiehr (@prairiehr) April 15, 2021
Mercredi has seen overdoses that need about four administered shots for the individual to be revived. This instance was like nothing Mercredi has seen up until this point.
“This is pretty extreme,” he said. “We couldn’t administer the shots fast enough. There were two of us prepping and administering through injection. There was two staff doing nasal administration. We were going as quickly as we could (and) we had another two staff doing chest compressions, so (using) the AED.
“It can take a bit to get all the shots out … Luckily our staff was really good, and really fast.”
Mercredi said the individual was sent to hospital for treatment following the overdose.
“Hopefully it’s not a busy night,” Mercredi cautioned.
