On the eve of Thanksgiving, Wrightsville Beach first responders used a nasal spray recovery drug to revive a man in a West Henderson Street house.
The Wrightsville Beach Fire Department administered the recovery drug Narcan to a 26-year-old man on Wednesday shortly after a 10 p.m. call to 14-A West Henderson St. Due to privacy protections in the federal health law HIPPA, Wrightsville Beach police said they weren’t permitted to identify the man. However, the police did obtain a search warrant for the house, where they found both narcotics and drug paraphernalia, Capt. J. Bishop said.
Narcan is a nasal spray that revives a person overdosed on an opioid, which can include street-drugs like heroin or prescription medication such as OxyContin. Bishop said evidence recovered from the house led to the belief that the man was suffering from a heroin overdose.
After receiving the 911 call, emergency responders dispatched both ambulance and police to the house. Inside, officers found the man unconscious and with vomit on his face. Another person in the house was attempting to perform CPR before the first police officer responding took over the process. The person provided information to officers, Bishop said, before the Wrightsville Beach fire department revived the man with the spray. He was conscious when he was taken to New Hanover County Medical Center.
“Fortunately, there was someone with him, who could speak for him,” Bishop said.
The use of the emergency recovery drug is rare for Wrightsville Beach, but not for the surrounding area. Opioid abuse is a problem often discussed by city and county officials and the city was rated the nation’s worst city for opioid abuse in an April study by San Francisco-based health care company Castlight Health. David Hines, Wilmington Fire Department public information officer, said the department administered Narcan more than 80 times in 2015 and he believes it will have used the rescue drug close to 100 times this year.
Wrightsville Beach Fire Chief Glen Rogers said Narcan is not used as frequently in Wrightsville Beach. He said it has been used in no more than four occasions since Rogers started with the department in May. Rogers said police are not always called in an overdose response. In some cases, the overdose can be from prescribed painkillers.
“Oftentimes, we may not know the medical situation, it’s not presented as an overdose,” Rogers said. “Sometimes it will have an effect on someone who’s unconscious or not breathing.”
The drug is administered to people who are unconscious and are having trouble breathing. Bishop said Narcan can be safely administered to people who aren’t in an opioid overdose.
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