Conner Adams was hanging out at a friend’s house on a recent Sunday when a man and a woman she didn’t know burst in the door and headed straight to the bathroom.

Minutes later, Adams heard screams and crying. The man came into the living room and hastily explained that his girlfriend had a condom inside her body stuffed with about $1,300 worth of heroin – and it wasn’t tied. She had tried to remove as much as possible in the shower, but a large amount of heroin was entering her body, and she was entering a massive overdose.

Adams ran to the bathroom, crouched next to the girl and stuck a needle in her right bicep, shooting naloxone into her veins – a drug that can snatch a person from death as they overdose on opioids such as heroin or prescription painkillers.

The girl kept murmuring, “I’m gonna die. I can’t breathe.” Adams injected her with repeated doses over several hours. She kept telling her, “You’re breathing.”

The girl survived.

Adams, who used heroin and crack as a teenager, saved the girl’s life as part of a North Carolina initiative that has halted, or reversed, more than 3,000 overdoses across the state in the last two years. This figure doesn’t include those overdoses stopped by first responders.

The program, the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (NCHRC), is focused on getting overdose drugs into the hands of current users and their peers. The coalition’s success is receiving national attention from peers and experts in overdose prevention, as opioid deaths have skyrocketed across the country in what many are calling an epidemic.

By way of comparison, New York State has reversed about 3,500 overdoses since 2006, according to William Matthews, who works with that state’s overdose prevention programs. And a Chicago-based program covering the state of Illinois has reached 7,388 people with naloxone – in the last two decades, according to Dan Bigg, director of the Chicago Recovery Alliance.

Eliza Wheeler, who collaborated with several other researchers on the most recent peer-reviewed survey of naloxone distribution programs in the US, said “no other state” in the country is doing the same kind of work as the North Carolina coalition.

The girl kept murmuring, 'I’m gonna die. I can’t breathe' ... She kept telling her, 'You’re breathing'

Adams, who oversees the coalition’s work in western North Carolina, said it’s important to have people who have used opioids working at preventing overdoses, because it’s easier to gain trust and reach current users, who often feel hopeless and marginalized.

“What we’re trying to do is create connections and make change,” said Adams, now 27. “We’re accessing a group that is so isolated.”

The scenario Adams faced recently at her friend’s house was her first time administering naloxone herself, after 18 months of volunteering and then working for the coalition. Until that moment, she had helped thousands of naloxone kits get into the hands of users and their peers.

That means the 500 reversals in her area have overwhelmingly been achieved by other addicts. “Drug users are … the heroes in this situation,” Adams says. “They’re stepping up and saving each other.”

Wheeler, who also directs a coalition focused on overdose prevention in San Francisco, said research has shown that “peers distributing to other drug users … is what works” to prevent deaths from opioid overdoses.

“I don’t know of any other state that’s doing widespread peer distribution networks like North Carolina,” she added.

Robert Childs, executive director of NCHRC, says his staff of five currently works with 185 volunteers across the state, most of whom are former or current users.

The organization has also helped put in place what experts say is another key to North Carolina’s life-saving success: laws that make it easier for regular people to get naloxone.

North Carolina passed its first law in early 2013, legalizing “standing orders” which allow doctors to authorize an entity such as the coalition to possess and distribute naloxone freely to persons at risk of overdose. Dozens of states have followed in the last two years, as the opioid epidemic has claimed increasing numbers of lives. Thirteen states still lack provisions legalizing standing orders, a fact Corey Davis finds “mind-boggling.” Davis, senior attorney with the National Health Law Program, has created a database of laws on naloxone access.

The importance of standing orders, Davis says, is that they “make naloxone available to people where they already are” – instead of limiting the drug’s availability to pharmacies, or clinics, or in ambulances or police cars.

Childs’ organization also works with all of the above, and has trained more than 100 police departments to use naloxone. Police in North Carolina have reversed more than 80 overdoses since January 2015, according to NCHRC.

Despite its success saving lives, the coalition faces an increasing obstacle: the cost of naloxone, and of staff needed to run a growing program. Kits can cost between $35 and $85 each, Wheeler says. Childs says the coalition’s budget, a mix of private and public funds, has grown from $30,000 a year to $600,000 in less than seven years. But this year alone, the coalition has passed out nearly 7,000 kits.

Reporting overdoses is also easier in North Carolina: the coalition collects the data in-person, online, by email, cellphone call or text. No personal information is kept. Many states use forms that can only be filled out at certain locations, Childs says. Making data collection simpler creates added public health value: on one occasion, 12 overdose reversals were reported in one location during a 24-hour period. A swift investigation revealed that a dangerous batch was on the streets; the coalition deployed volunteers to pass the word to users.

Peter Davidson, a professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine who has studied opioid deaths said it’s “frustrating” to see that other states haven’t yet adopted North Carolina’s methods, which he believes should be a national model.

“We have a really good … public health response that works, and seeing it not being done more comprehensively is infuriating,” he said. “You’re watching the death reports come in, and you know they don’t need to be that high.”