The Warminster-based nonprofit, D.A.V.E., has partnered with Banyan Treatment Centers to offer another Narcan training and kit distribution event in the Levittown area.
The free session will be held at the Falls Township Municipal Building at 188 Lincoln Highway from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, September 28. Registration is required as space for the event is limited. Those interested can register by contacting the organization through email: davewarriors73@gmail.com.
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D.A.V.E. (Drug Addiction Overdose Education) was started by Warminster mom Cathy Messina after her son, David, then 21, fatally overdosed in her home from heroin laced with fentanyl after a short battle with addiction. Messina has since made it her life mission to protect other families from losing a loved one to overdose by providing free training and life-saving naloxone (Narcan) kits in two-hour public sessions throughout the area.
Narcan, is a prescription-only drug that restores the breathing capabilities of somebody experiencing a opiate drug overdose. It does absolutely nothing to those not experiencing a drug overdose, as it only blocks brain receptors from recognizing the drug. While the public can purchase the drug from local pharmacies like CVS, Messina said the kits (which come with two doses) retail for $159 and are rarely kept in stock on a consistent basis. D.A.V.E. has access to kits through donations and is therefore able to purchase them for half of the retail cost- providing them to the public for free.
“People say, yeah, you give them Narcan, and then they may go use again,” Messina told LevittownNow.com last September during a training event in Middletown. “I tell them, yes, they may, and I hope that if they overdose, I’m there again to save them; and I’ll keep saving them until they see that their own life is worth saving.”
