Recently, a man stood outside the Portland central city library holding a sign that read “please pray for me.” He was on his fourth day of detoxing off of fentanyl. Trying to get sober while cold, alone and living on the streets was becoming increasingly more difficult for him, and he had written the sign as a last plea for some kind of divine intervention.
That intervention came in the form of outreach workers who were on the street that day as part of a pilot project with Measure 110 providers and the Portland Police Bureau’s central city neighborhood response team, the Central NRT Bike Squad. He told them how desperately he wanted to stop using fentanyl, but he felt himself slipping. The team is made up of compassionate recovery peers, people who are also in recovery. Thanks to their quick work, within just a few hours this man was safe indoors, getting basic survival needs met while the outreach team successfully secured a spot for him at a local treatment program.
They got him connected with medication-assisted treatment to ease symptoms of withdrawal and an emergency shelter bed at a recovery house.