“A mother from suburban Hartford, Conn., had a life-saving drug on hand when she truly needed it. One evening last spring, she found her son, who had recently returned from an addiction treatment pro-gram, unconscious in his bedroom. He had relapsed and overdosed on heroin. ‘He was not breathing, and he was gray,’ says the woman, who requests anonymity to protect her son’s privacy. ‘That’s when I called 911 and went running around the house trying to find my Narcan. We gave him two injections to get him breathing again before the ambulance got to our house.’ Narcan is the trade name for naloxone, a drug that’s been used by emergency medical personnel for decades to reverse accidental drug overdoses from opioids, including heroin, methadone and prescription pain medications like oxycodones.” (11/06/09)