Volunteers hit streets to stop opioid overdoses in Buffalo

He grew up in a household torn apart by drugs. His own substance abuse started with abuse of prescription drugs such as Oxycontin and Hydrocodone. He later turned to heroin, and he is frank in admitting that it led him to do terrible things.

“I was robbing and hurting people,” he said.

Harzynski spent five years in prison, and it was during that time when he finally decided he needed to change his life. And he also decided he wanted to help others like him.

That’s why on Tuesday, he and a couple of other volunteers who have survived substance abuse hit the streets to seek out the people currently living that nightmare.

“You have to take multiple creative ways to get back to restoring you to who you were before your addiction,” Harzynski said, putting on his red backpack stuffed with flyers, business cards and lifesaving kits. There’s a message written on the backpack: “Ask me about Narcan. Be prepared. Save a life.”

“That’s what we’re about,” Harzynski said.

Harzynski is one of the founders of Creative Restorations, Inc., a peer-led nonprofit that links people to recovery services. Everyone on his staff of volunteers are in recovery themselves and have experience working in the recovery field, he said.

As part of their mission, the volunteers spend several evenings each week doing direct outreach. In small groups, they headed out to areas where they know people are using heroin and other opioids. They offer boxes of Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose, along with testing strips that can detect fentanyl and xylazine, which are known to cause fatal overdoses, containers to safely store used needles, and clean “works” – syringes and caps. There’s also a pamphlet with the services the group offers and a phone number to call.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, Western New York, like the…