Why more young Albertans are packing naloxone kits to save peers at bars and parties

Jordan Knapp notices a bag of cocaine on a glass table at a Calgary house party. 

Then she looks at a friend sitting on a couch nearby. He's pale, silent. She touches him and notices how sweaty he is.

It's an overdose, she realizes. After years of experience as a social worker, the signs are clear.

She runs to another room and grabs a naloxone kit, a small pouch with an antidote to reverse opioid overdoses.

With the help of two others, she gets her friend into a cold shower and jabs the needle into his bottom. 

"He came back after one vial," remembers Knapp, who had used naloxone kits before — but never on someone she knew.

"It was just very traumatic for me.… I think doing it on a friend was more traumatic than doing it on a stranger."

Knapp, who's 31, is far from the only young Albertan packing a naloxone kit these days to parties, bars and other social gatherings.

The number of free kits being distributed by the province through select pharmacies and community centres has jumped by 47 per cent year over year — to 65,149 in the first half of 2021 from 44,221 in the same period in 2020.

And young adults like Knapp and workers at pharmacies and community centres where they're being distributed tell CBC News that people in their 20s and 30s are driving much of the demand.

It's not surprising, given older teens and young adults are the fast-growing age group in Canada to need hospital care due to overdoses. And in Alberta, which seems poised to have a record number of overdoses this year, more than half the fatalities since January have been among people in their 20s and 30s.

Knapp says she's saved dozens of people using naloxone kits while working as a social worker at a harm reduction facility.

But she also says she's used the kits in her personal life and administered naloxone to three people at parties or bars in the past two years. 

"I actually find that I give out kits more to my friends and to people in the bar that are partying rather than people experiencing homelessness," said Knapp, who also works part-time as a server at a downtown bar.