Shane Hunter heard a series of muffled noises and indiscernible voices as he drifted in and out of consciousness.
He felt groggy, like he was waking up from a nap before rolling over and falling back asleep. Hunter didn't realize it at the time, but he was actually in a dreamlike state of limbo — straddling the line between life and death.
For Hunter, who was addicted to heroin at the time, it was at least the ninth time he hovered across this macabre threshold over just five days in 2018. Each time, he had overdosed and was revived with the opioid reversal drug naloxone.
"Once I started shooting, it was game over," Hunter, 43, of Circleville, said of his heroin use. "I couldn't stop dying. I was dying all the time."
In the fight against the opioid epidemic, personal stories bolster the case for naloxone rather than the sparse data available, experts say.
