Heroin heroine: Sara Adey's story

Lateline takes you inside a housing estate in inner Sydney to meet a woman who has saved seven neighbours from drug overdose in the past year.

The 14-storey brick housing block in Surry Hills is home to about 1,000 people; young, old, families, migrants, artists.

Some of them are drug users, and with that comes the risk of overdose.

Sara Adey has lived here for about 18 months.

A year ago she completed a course at a local drug rehabilitation centre to administer Naloxone, also known as Narcan.

It is a drug that ambulance officers have used for years, injecting people to save them when they have overdosed on heroin.

Two years ago, trials were held for a wider roll-out of Narcan across the country, and hundreds of members of the public have now also completed training courses to administer it.

Since doing the Narcan course, Ms Adey has been called upon day and night to help save people who have overdosed.

I was lucky enough to receive housing accommodation assistance. I was in a number of domestic violence incidents. I was tied up with zip ties and a baseball bat was used a number of times on me. That person involved is doing 11 years' jail for it.

Where I live ... it's a very colourful, vibrant community of all different people, different ages. There is certainly some drug use and some people get into problems.

There was a young lady here two nights ago [who died]. She was only 19. I can't remember the number that have died, but it's probably three or four in the last 18 months at least. They were drug related. The most recent one was this young lady. She had other things in her system ... people weren't paying attention to what she was doing and she was in her little room in one of the flats and it was too late when they noticed she hadn't re-emerged.

A month ago or so a shopping trolley was thrown from the 10th floor and landed within a foot of me. But that's just one of those things that could happen anywhere ... it wasn't malicious, just accidental I think.

About a year ago I decided to participate in the Narcan training course. I was studying and I feel strongly about helping people. When the opportunity came up, I went for it. The training course involves resuscitation and obviously the first aid component and the administration of Narcan. News travelled fast. I had knocks on the door on numerous occasions ... early in the morning, late at night, during the day. I had people desperate to access the drug.

In each case they've been blue by the time I've got there. A person I revived a few months ago, he was a cocaine user and he accidentally was given a heroin component to the cocaine. So he was snorting predominantly heroin, and then he went into overdose from that.

I'll go straight to getting out the Narcan, which is a very simple procedure, it's just a matter of attaching the syringe to the vial of Naloxone ... It's intramuscular so usually the top of the arm is the easiest, or the thigh or buttocks. Within probably a minute with me it's been good news and they come to. So far, I've saved seven people's lives. They usually come out of the situation surprised and then extremely happy and wanting to take me out for dinner or something.

The first time I did it I felt very uplifted and empowered but really it's just a matter of an essential thing that has to be done. It's businesslike, you do it and you move on from it. There's not enough support for those people who do have problems and I felt very strongly that I want to help those who are often dysfunctional and don't get the opportunity to receive support ... particularly when it comes to a life and death situation

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Topics: drugs-and-substance-abuse, community-and-society, drug-use, heroin, surry-hills-2010, sydney-2000, nsw, australia