“All of my friends are dead”: The overdose crisis is taking a toll on harm reduction workers

Stephen Murray’s work in harm reduction doesn’t end when he leaves the office at 5 p.m. As the Harm Reduction Program Manager at Boston Medical Center who runs the SafeSpot Overdose Hotline, he is on call 24/7. “These overdose prevention sites and supervised consumption sites were not adapted and developed to deal with this level of overdoses.” Related Why harm reduction is more about ending stigma than syringes and naloxone Many in this line of work have experiencing using drugs themselves and employ their lived experiences to help guide others to treatment or safe use. “That has shifted the responsibility of overdose response in a lot of ways to people who use drugs and the ones that are supporting them, like harm reduction workers.” Although the war on drugs pushes an abstinence-only model that discourages “enabling” people who used drugs, evidence suggests those strategies have only made the overdose crisis worse. While harm reduction is often focused on “peer” and community support, this label can also sometimes get in the way of harm reduction workers getting adequate benefits and pay, Kolla said. “They need access to benefits because the benefits are crucial in terms of ensuring people have access to things like counseling and support to help them cope with the grief, loss and stress they’re facing from their jobs.” To Kolla, this is deeply rooted in stigma against the clients harm reduction workers are serving.