A teenage girl from Quebec’s Eastern Townships survived an opioid overdose last month thanks to two of her classmates.
Highschoolers Samuel Vincent and Thomas Roberge were at the right place at the right time — with the right equipment.
“At first I thought she was [a little too] drunk, and at a point she just blacked out, she didn’t answer me at all, she didn’t move at all, and her heart stopped working,” Roberge recounted to CTV News. “At this moment, I called my best friend to go get some Naloxone.”
The pair had decided to bring a Naloxone kit with them to a party, suspecting some people would be taking drugs.
“I got a voice in my head that said it might be drugs — opioids, so fentanyl, codeine, heroin, morphine — so I decided to not take a chance,” Roberge said, referring to the moment he realized the girl was in serious danger.
The effect was immediate, with her heartbeat returning as the boys waited for an ambulance.
For Roberge, the biggest relief came in the middle of the night.
“At two o’clock in the morning I got a text that said ‘thank you, because you saved my life.'”
So how does a16-year-old become so prepared? It turns out Roberge and Vincent took a first aid elective at their high school in Granby, Collège Mont-Sacré-Coeur.
School staff praised the pair’s quick action.
“If young people are better equipped to face situations like this, that’s what we want,” said the school’s vice-principal, David Choinière.
Naloxone kits are widely available for free at drugstores across Canada. The instructions are straight forward, and use of the medication is now included in basic first-aid training.
With files from Véronique Dubé at Noovo Info.
