Anita Kennedy, left, Outreach Coordinator, Opioid Treatment Program at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, with Erin Clyne, an attendee of the remembrance event.
Through poetry, music, and spoken-word performances, participants told stories of drug addiction and loss on International Overdose Awareness Day, Friday, August 31, in Davis Auditorium.
The event, called a remembrance, was open to the public and sponsored by the Respectful & Equitable Access to Comprehensive Healthcare (REACH) program in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the Mount Sinai Center for Spirituality and Health.
Attendees lit candles and wrote notes in honor of lost family and friends, and experts provided information on harm reduction, including lessons in administering the overdose-reversal drug naloxone. Members of the Center for Spirituality and Health distributed aromatherapy and herbal teas from the mobile wellness Chi Cart™.
“The lives of those lost to drug overdose are no less worthy than any other lives, and their loss is no less dignified and deserving of remembrance and honor,” said Jeffrey Weiss, PhD, Director of the REACH program. “We can acknowledge the loss of those to drug overdose, free of any stigma, shame, or concealment.”