Duluth Community Remembers Loved Ones Lost to Drug Overdose
Duluth honors National Overdose Awareness Day
DULUTH, Minn.- August 31 is National Overdose Awareness Day. Communities across the country use the day to bring attention to the way addiction affects people’s lives.
The Duluth community remembered their loved ones in a vigil at the Hillside Community Center, but the event was less about mourning and was more about getting rid of the stigma associated with addiction.
“Today is a sad day, but yet it’s a day of hope, it’s a day of healing,” event volunteer organizer Kathy Jo Londo-Harr said.
Duluth honors National Overdose Awareness Day through honesty.
“I’m back in recovery. I’ve been sober 108 days,” Londo-Harr said.
Kathy Jo is an organizer for the vigil remembering loved ones lost to drugs and alcohol.
She encourages people to share their testimonies with addiction in hopes that it creates conversation and takes away some of the negative stigma.
“We want to bring out the awareness. We want to educate people. We want to educate people,” Londo-Harr said.
Sue Purchase says teaching people abstinence from drugs isn’t an effective way to prevent overdoses.
“What this event does is brings people together so that we can talk and we can meet one another and we can gather and we can dance and we can remember and we can celebrate and grieve and cry, but create positive change because the same old thing isn’t working,” Purchase said. “You can’t just say no. People die.”
She says the vigil teaches people other ways to save lives from overdoses, showing them how to use Narcan, a medicine that can treat opioid overdoses and telling them why people use drugs in the first place.
“Drugs and substance use has been a part of my whole life growing up and I’ve seen the devastation and the death that it can cause. And i feel like i’m in a position to help reduce that. To learn from my experience and to support and nurture other people doing something different,” Purchase said.
From 2015 to 2017, St. Louis county had the 5th most overdose deaths in the state of Minnesota. These numbers are why vigil organizers say prevention methods need to change, starting with talking about drug addiction more in Duluth.
