Steve Wohlen lay on his front lawn, blue, unconscious and barely breathing, overdosing on heroin.
His mother ran outside, frantically assembling a pen-like canister. Her heart pounding, she dropped to her knees and used the device to deliver two squirts up her son's nostrils.
Within minutes, his eyes opened, color returned to his face, and he sat up - brought back from a potentially lethal overdose by a drug commonly known by its old brand name, Narcan.
The drug, widely sold under its generic name, naloxone, counteracts the effects of heroin, OxyContin and other powerful painkillers and has been routinely used by ambulance crews and emergency rooms in the U.S. for decades. But in the past few years, public health officials across the nation have been distributing it free to addicts and their loved ones, as well as to some police and firefighters.
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