Show notes
She Shot Heroin in Her Neck and Overdosed on the Phone: The Call That Saved Kimber’s Life
This week on Dopey’s Greatest Hits!
A woman named Kimber leaves rehab, returns home alone and prepares to inject what she believes is heroin—probably fentanyl—into her neck. Knowing her tolerance has disappeared, she calls the Never Use Alone hotline. Nurse Jessie stays on the phone, urges Kimber to use less and collects her location. Moments after injecting, Kimber stops responding. Jessie calls for help, and paramedic Stephen Murray arrives in time to revive her with Narcan.
The episode expands the extraordinary story first told on This American Life. Stephen describes his own addiction, recovery and unlikely path from finance and drug use to firefighting, emergency medicine and harm-reduction work. He explains how the Massachusetts Overdose Prevention Hotline became the country’s first government-funded overdose hotline and why it offers anonymous, judgment-free support to anyone using drugs alone.
Kimber then tells her side of the call: getting expelled from rehab, shooting cocaine all night, buying heroin after 40 abstinent days and waking up surrounded by emergency workers. The overdose did not immediately stop her addiction—she returned to treatment, entered a rehab romance and continued using for another two years. Now twenty months sober, she works for the same hotline that saved her, answering calls from people using alone and giving them the connection, companionship and protection she once needed.
Truly one of our all timers!
And More!
Original title: The Time Kimber Shot Fentanyl in Her Neck and Died and Stephen Saved Her Life| Dopey's Greatest Hits
