TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — According to the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office, there were over 500 deaths from drug overdosesin 2023, an all-time high.
The Church of Safe Injection Tucson (CoSIT) is one organization trying to reverse this troubling trend.
CoSIT focuses on treating the health concerns resulting from drug use, such as absessed skin, HIV and hepatitis C.
The organization hands out Narcan, clean needles, fentanyl test strips and more to those suffering from drug addiction. Volunteer Chris Chapman says that empathy plays a major role in helping drug users find treatment.
“They’ve been told by society ‘you’re a drug addict, you’re ugly you’re a terrible person, you’re crazy, you’re stupid, and also, you should die’ which is another message we send to drug addicts,” Chapman said. “So when we show them that they’re worth being taken care of, it sparks something in them.”
At one time, Chapman would be an unlikely candidate to volunteer for CoSIT. He says he grew up in a religious, conservative household, where drug addicts were thought of as simply “bad people.”
His ideas changed when he began getting cluster headaches, experiencing such constant pain that he began to treat his condition with medical marijuana, a substance he’d never tried until he was in 30s.
He met others who experienced chronic pain, and who sometimes treated it with illicit substances like heroin and fentanyl. He soon realized that people who used drugs were more complicated than he realized and that addiction was more related to mental health than he knew.
“I’ve worked with people on the street, with young people at raves, where drugs are being heavily used, and the one thing I see among all of them is mental health issues, especially post traumatic stress disorder,” Chapman said. “If you talk to some of these people and learn how they were raised, it’s horrifying.”
But Chapman’s call to the Church of Safe Injection came when many of those around him started suffering overdoses, including a close friend.
“We’re pouring ice down his pants, slapping him in the face,” Chapman says of his friend’s overdose. “Luckily we brought him back,”
Rather than abandoning his friend, Chris chose to keep him safe.
“I got some Narcan, gave it to that friend’s wife,” Chapman said. “The next week, he overdosed again and she saved his life with it.”
This opened Chris’ eyes to how he could help prevent overdose deaths, which have been climbing for the past decade.
Chapman was immediately attracted to CoSIT’s empathetic approach to drug users, which ran counter to the focus on punishment and tough love that he grew up with in the 1980s.
“We allowed people to die on purpose and restricted the things that could have saved them from dying to send a message to kids that drugs are more dangerous than they really are,” Chapman says.
In contrast, he says CoSIT takes a realistic view using harm reduction techniques.
“Our goal is to really just to keep people who use drugs as safe as we can while they’re doing it and to stop the spread of blood-borne illnesses,” he said. “This is to reduce the risk of overdose, help people reverse the overdoses, and also get people into treatment when they’re ready to do that.”
He says that some people have issues with the organization’s approach, accusing them of encouraging drug use.
“People would kind of hate me for doing good and I’d have to explain to them that I wasn’t enabling and wasn’t making things worse,” Chapman said.
However, he counters with evidence, such as a CDC report finding that people who go to a syringe service provider are five times more likely to enter treatment for drug use, along with being three times as likely to stop using drugs.
Chapman is encouraged by the shift in direction towards drug treatment, saying that it makes up for years of bad decision-making.
“No one ever didn’t use drugs because they didn’t have a clean needle,” he said. “So there going to use the needles and spread HIV and hep C and that’s simply an added harm that there’s no reason for.”
For more information on the Church of Safe Injection Tucson, visit the organization’s website.
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Joel Foster is a multimedia journalist at KGUN 9 who previously worked as an English teacher in both Boston and the Tucson area. Joel has experience working with web, print and video in the tech, finance, nonprofit and the public sectors. In his off-time, you might catch Joel taking part in Tucson's local comedy scene. Share your story ideas with Joel at joel.foster@kgun9.com, or by connecting on Facebook, Instagram or X.
