ARLINGTON, Va. — Hundreds of people have taken part in the three Take Action events that have been held over the past two weeks in Arlington County. Through the event, the community has been able to get free training on to use Narcan, a brand of Naloxone.
They were organized by the Arlington Addiction Recovery Initiative
"We've done it as a result of an influx in community requests," said Opioids Program Manager Emily Siqveland.
Through the three events, she told WUSA9 more than 200 packages of Narcan were distributed in person, and that they received close to 1,000 requests for it to be mailed to people.
The training is relatively simple and takes just a few minutes.
"I was surprised how simple it was," said Adrienne Varner.
The Falls Church Mom was one of the attendees of Wednesday's event.
"I'm amazed at how much I'm hearing every day about Fentanyl overdoses. I figure this is just something that's going to be with us for a long time to come and we all really need to learn how to deal with it," said Varner.
Varner is the parent of two teenagers and said she's told them to be careful.
"I told them don't accept anything, sadly not just from strangers, but even friends because you have no idea what could be laced with this. That's what's most frightening. Even somebody who has no intention of drugging themselves up could fall victim to this," said Varner.
Siqveland said there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to getting trained on how to administer Naloxone.
"One of the biggest is saying having Narcan encourages people to overdose. That's like saying someone wearing a seatbelt is encouraged to get in an accident. That's probably one of the biggest misconceptions," said Siqveland.
They also offered free CPR training.
"Unfortunately sometimes people get to the point that they need CPR when they overdose. So training them can only be beneficial," said Arlington County Fire Department Lt. Jamie Jill
At the end of the day, they said this training isn't just for people who are around drugs or using.
"All of us have a role to keep our community safe. It may not be you that needs to be revived but it's someone in our community and from my perspective, a healthy community takes care of each other," said Siqveland.
To obtain free naloxone through the mail, you can complete this request form, by scheduling a 10-minute abridged training over the phone, or by attending a 1-hour virtual Narcan training.
To schedule a training, E-mail: narcan@arlingtonva.us