St. Paul police officer John Conrad Jr. was trained to use Narcan, an anti-overdose drug for opioids, last Thursday. Five days later, on his first full shift since the training, he had to use it.

On Tuesday, Conrad was patrolling on Kellogg Boulevard near downtown when he noticed a slow-moving and swerving Ford Taurus. The driver’s left hand was on the wheel, and her right hand was frantically swinging around the back seat.

“You could see the distress on her face. You could tell there was something going on in her car,” Conrad recounted Wednesday.

Conrad pulled the car over. As he approached, the woman yelled out her window that her friend needed help. He looked into the back seat and saw a 38-year-old woman leaning against the headrest. Her pupils were constricted, her skin pale, her lips blue. She was barely breathing, Conrad said.

“I honestly don’t think she had very much time left,” he said.

That is when his training kicked in.

After the driver and two other passengers in the car admitted that the woman had used drugs, Conrad checked with fellow officers and then administered the Narcan.

“You want to follow the right protocols being the first time,” Conrad said. “I was a little nervous to use it.”

He administered it through her nose, and within 15 seconds she had started to breathe on her own, he said. It was about a minute before the breathing became somewhat consistent, and another couple minutes before paramedics arrived and eventually took her to the hospital.

“It was nice to have something there to actually use to help save the person, versus having to sit there for the five, six minutes to wait on the medics to get there. You never know how much time they actually have,” Conrad said.

Minnesota authorities are noticing a dramatic increase in opioid abuse. In 2016, 395 Minnesotans died of opioid overdoses, an 18 percent increase over 2015, according to state Department of Health data. Ramsey County accounted for 35 of those that year.

St. Paul police officers began training in how to use Narcan in November and most of them began carrying it by the end of December. Officers have successfully administered it six times since, the first time on Christmas Eve.

Other departments that carry Narcan, such as the Hennepin County sheriff’s office, only used it seven times in an entire year.

“We’ve made a difference to the people in these situations where minutes count,” St. Paul police spokesman Sgt. Mike Ernster said.

None of the people in the car received any citations.