Saving lives in the backyard

Also: The looming pharmacy crisis in America [Donate ❤️]( [View in Browser](  December 12, 2023 Hi CommonHealth reader, After more than a year of work and lots of legal and safety consultations, my WBUR colleague Martha Bebinger reported an incredibly important story today. It's about a topic so sensitive it’s been keeping her up at night. “I haven’t slept very well for a couple of weeks,” she told me. In [this piece]( Martha introduces us to a woman who is helping people stay alive by supervising them — and providing medical care — as they use drugs in her home and in her yard. Her goal is to make sure they don’t die from an overdose. This is quite controversial. Many people feel that helping someone use drugs encourages them to keep using substances, instead of getting treatment. There's also a law, passed during a surge in crack cocaine use, that says it’s illegal to open or run a place where people use controlled substances. So, this woman could face consequences for what she does. I spoke with Martha about why she felt she needed to get this story out there, despite the risks, and what it took to report. Here’s the behind-the-scenes peek, in Martha's words. A story years in the making “I've been wanting to do a story about home-based supervised consumption for several years because I kept hearing about parents who were doing this, and were kind of ashamed of it. They were doing it in hiding the same way that people feel like they have to hide their addiction to drugs and often alcohol. “I had heard of some moms who had set up very informal systems with their kids: Always tell me when you're using. Always leave your bedroom door, the bathroom door open. So if the person overdoses, the parent was there with Narcan and ready to call 911. “So, I had talked to several moms in Massachusetts. And the timing just didn't work out for various reasons. In this process of networking, someone said, ‘Why don't you call this woman, Renae? She doesn't live in Massachusetts, but she does this. So, I called her probably a year and a half ago.” (WBUR agreed not to use full names in this story because some of the things described may be illegal.) Who is Renae? “Renae started off as a mom who was like, ‘You're not one of those kids who does drugs. You're going to go to school. You're going to get a job. You're not going to date that boy.’ Very controlling. Her daughter rebelled and left home, and got addicted to opioids. “Then at one point, the daughter just stopped responding [to calls and texts]. And so after about a month, Renae was driving, and she saw her daughter, Brooke, walking down the side of the street, and she just had this epiphany: ‘Oh, my gosh, you're alive. That's all I care about.’ “So, she does this complete 360. She starts buying her [daughter] Narcan. Eventually, she buys her needles. But then her daughter is just giving all the stuff away and saying, ‘Mom, I need more Narcan. I need more needles.’ And Renae realizes she has to take care of this whole community of people if she wants to be sure that her daughter has the supplies she needs. Fast forward to today “At this point, she drops [supplies] at four sites a week. These are areas where there's a lot of gang activity. She also literally does overdose prevention at her home and in her backyard for some people she trusts. It’s like DIY overdose prevention. She lives in this gray space that most of us wouldn't think about occupying because drugs are illegal.” Reporting on something that may be illegal “I don't even know if prosecutors know that home-based supervised consumption is happening as often as it is. And Renae's not just a parent doing this for her kid anymore. She's doing this for a wider community of people. So, we took a lot of precautions. “We try to protect her identity. We don't use full names in the story. We altered voices. We don't give a precise location for where she lives. I had to talk to lawyers about what was wise, and we had to decide in advance, would I turn over my notes to a prosecutor, if I was subpoenaed. “I hope we got her story out there in a way that doesn't come back to bite her. I worry about that. “We also had to go over a lot of safety stuff. This is a partnership with NPR, so they have a person who handles reporter safety issues. And I had several conversations with her about what situations I would, or wouldn't, go into. There’s an area where Renae does the drop-offs, and I wanted to go see, but it was in a trap house — you know, a trap house is where the drug deals happen, and people often use in there and there can be turf stuff between gangs — and the safety person said I couldn't do that one.” Why it's important to get this story out “There are several reasons. One is to recognize that overdose prevention, or supervised consumption, is happening all the time, even though we as a society are all tied up in knots about the rules about this. “On the one hand, this is a very personal story of how one parent navigated this very emotionally, legally, logistically fraught landscape: What's the best way to keep my kid alive? “Then on another level, Renae's work really shows a different approach to dealing with addiction because she's all about compassion. She's all about making connections. She's all about building trust that will eventually help the people she works with move on to a life where they feel like they're their best selves again, where they're not living in shame.” At least, that's the hope. For more on this subject, tune into Radio Boston tomorrow at 11 a.m.; Martha will be on the show to talk about [this story]( as well as the latest Massachusetts overdose numbers. 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