Students hoping to make Narcan more accessible support students in recovery

Suzy Lanter hadn’t even taken her first class at Sonoma State University, and she was already making moves to start a club to support students in recovery from drugs, alcohol and other compulsive behaviors.

“This is my first semester at SSU, but over the summer I noticed there was no remedial club,” Lanter, 34, said. “So we started Sea wolves for recovery.“

“We” is Lanter and fellow Santa Rosa Junior College transfer Martha Piña.

Lanter and Piña, 50, were both active in the Remedial students club at SRJC. They understand very well the types of support that an active recovery club can provide.

And part of that is knowing that some students, wherever they are in sobriety, might struggle just walking through the door.

Piña met with SSU students who said no to the weekly senior club meetings in Salazar Hall, but said yes to having coffee with her.

Some students have transitioned to sobriety but worry about how they will be viewed by their peers. Other students want help taking the first step toward sober living. Perhaps more students want to know how to support their loved ones.

Wherever students are, Lanter and Piña want the club to be what students need – and meet them where they are.

“If somebody needs help, I really want to be able to provide that,” said Lanter, who has been sober for 10 years. “I want them to know that there is another way to live. We have the lived experience. We can do other things besides having to live with our addiction.”

And part of that mission is to work to get Narcan into the hands of students.

Narcan is the brand name for naloxone, a drug that, when used quickly and correctly, can reverse an opioid overdose. It usually comes in a nasal spray and is particularly safe if used on someone who is not overdosing, but rather passed out or asleep.

More than 107,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2022 in the United States, and 3 out of 4 of these deaths involved an opioid. The 220 people who died each day in 2021 represented a 16 percent increase from the previous year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

California law now requires campuses to provide access to naloxone.

Effective January 1, 2023, the Campus Opioid Safety Act requires campus health centers at most public colleges and universities in California to provide free Narcan to students.

At Sonoma State, Narcan is available to students at the Student Health Center. Students cannot obtain naloxone from school officials without completing 30 minutes of training.

Both Lanter and Piña believe that following the letter of the law is not enough. They advocate that SSU make Narcan more readily available in peer-to-peer programs, such as Seawolves for Recovery, rather than requiring students to go through official university channels.

“That’s the goal,” Piña said.

Visiting a campus office for Narcan can be daunting for some students, they said. The stigma still exists.

“Back in the day, I wouldn’t have gone to a student health center,” said Piña, who has been sober for six years.

When accidental overdoses and cases of fentanyl poisoning are on the rise, Narcan is a life-saving tool. There shouldn’t be shame or judgment in promoting Narcan, there should be support, they said.

The advent of fentanyl drugs made youthful experiments increasingly deadly.

Pills sold through social media or passed by friends are made to look like legitimate drugs, such as Percocet, OxyContin, Xanax or Adderall. But there are increasingly sophisticated fakes, made on the cheap and laced with fentanyl, a synthetic drug which can be 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, according to California Department of Public Health.

“There is no luxury to be curious,” Piña said.

Michelle Leopold’s son Trevor died in 2019 during his freshman year at Sonoma State University. Trevor, who has long struggled with marijuana use disorder, thought he had bought Oxycodone, a pain medication, Leopold said.

It was fentanyl.

Today, Michelle — who regularly speaks to high school and college-age audiences about the dangers of experimentation in today’s drug landscape — wears a button that lets people know she carries Narcan.

Drugs like fentanyl make carrying Narcan a vital safety measure.

Mo Phillips, director of student engagement at SSU, disagrees. Phillips is the bringer Leopold on campus to speak at freshman orientation.

Narcan is available on the SSU campus at the Green Music Center, the Recreation Center, athletic department outposts and other locations, Phillips said.