My girlfriend and I are both past heroin users. We live in a one-bedroom apartment in Baltimore. One night eight months ago, we finished dinner, snorted some opioids and went into the kitchen. I was washing dishes and she was putting food away when I passed out, falling face-first into the sink.

Fortunately, we had naloxone, in an easy-to-administer nasal spray called Narcan. Our Narcan kit had a magnet on it and we kept it on the refrigerator. My girlfriend snatched it off the fridge and administered a full dose to me.

When I didn’t budge, she ran into the bedroom and got another Narcan kit. She administered that. I took one deep breath and went back to unconsciousness. I was back on my way to dying there on the floor. She remembered we had a third kit in the nightstand next to our bed, retrieved it and administered to me again. I then regained consciousness. Coming so close to losing my life scared me straight. I haven’t used drugs since.