USA. Harm Reduction at Sea: Tight-Knit Fishing Communities Navigate Drugs
USA. Harm Reduction at Sea: Tight-Knit Fishing Communities Navigate Drugs
The setting sun shines a crown of pink light through the windows of a loud bar on the Massachusetts coast, packed with fishermen. It’s 3:30 pm—the end of a long day that began well before dawn. The weight of wear and tear on exhausted muscles and minds is as palpable as the bursts of deep belly laughter and the smell of sweat. Johnnie*, a salt-and-pepper fisherman in his late 50s, is smiling as he tells me what happened one dark night last year.
“It was like a movie star, dropping down from the sky off the helicopter to get to my crewmate, pitch of night,” he says. “The Coast Guard—this handsome guy, my wife would’ve loved him, like Rock Hudson—dropped down from the moon. Felt like hours after we had given him all the Narcan we had. The Coast Guard still didn’t carry it back then, did you know that? So they pulled him up into the clouds and we all were left below at sea.”
“It’s not the first time that’s happened on our boat,” Johnnie says. “If we didn’t have that Narcan on board though, kid probably wouldn’t have made it.” (Filter Mag, USA. 08.04.2021)