Mary Harris
speaker
236 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Sep 2023
last heard 25 May
Mary Harris’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It meant Stephen couldn't find her. That overdose call solidified something for Stephen. With drug supply getting more dangerous, keeping people who use drugs safe meant making sure they weren't left by themselves. It was sometime around then that he heard about the Never Use Alone hotline, and it immediately made sense. So he got involved. Zoom meetings, stuff like that. That's how he met Jesse.
To get the word out where he was, he made these little cards.
He convinced programs that give out clean syringes to include these never-use-alone cards in their kits. Stephen had no idea if any of this was really working. A lot of times he'd talk to drug users who said, what, I'm going to call up some stranger, tell him I'm about to inject dope? Are you kidding?
But a few hours before he revived Kimber, she had gotten one of these cards bundled up with the stuff she'd picked up at a needle exchange. That was why she called. That was the thing that saved her life. Stephen didn't know that, though. When he dragged her out of the bathroom that day and started giving her rescue breaths, there was a cell phone right next to her.
He just didn't put two and two together. After Kimber opened her eyes, Stephen told her she had to go to the hospital for observation. That meant she had to do this walk of shame down her front steps and climb into the back of the ambulance. It was nearly summer, but she put on her big winter coat, pulled up the hood. Stephen started packing up.
Before he left the scene, he went to check in with his crew.
Stephen says over his time as a paramedic, he pronounced maybe 30 people dead from an overdose. All of them were alone. Kimber was alone too, but she had the line. The line had worked. It's so rare to find something that actually protects people once they're dealing with an addiction. But even when you save someone from an overdose, it doesn't mean they'll stop using. In fact, usually they don't.
The morning after Stephen revived Kimber, Jesse sent her a text. Hi, she wrote. I am so thankful you called. She sent this with a little smiley face and a green heart emoji. Within a couple of hours, Kimber wrote back. She thanked Jessie, asked how many times she got Narcanned. Then, Kimber says, I want to use again this morning, but I'm terrified.
If you use again today, Jessie replied, the likelihood of you ODing again is almost guaranteed.
Jesse is kind of the backstop for the entire hotline, the whole operation. If none of the other operators are available, the calls automatically go to her, and she pretty much always picks up. Sometimes she'll even give someone her cell and say, just call me directly. She did that with Kimber. It's like she can't help herself. Oh, I got a call. Okay.
I went down to visit Jessie at her home in Georgia to watch her work.
Never use a loan. It's Jessie. From the second I walked in, she was taking calls. Still in her house dress and mismatched socks. The vibe was organized chaos. She takes in strays, seven cats, one is missing an eye, a chihuahua, and more chickens than she can count. Look at our eggs.
They lay their eggs in the garage. I wanted to know how Jessie, a nurse, had ended up spending so much of her time on this line. And at some point, in a pause in the conversation, she said this. My child has called this line before. She was talking about Kaylin. Kaylin's 23, her only kid.
She's magnificent. Kaylin has overdosed a dozen times and counting. Have you picked up the phone and it's your daughter?
Watching her daughter nearly die again and again is kind of how Jesse came around to a whole new way of thinking. And the hotline, too. She tried for years to force her daughter to change. She wanted her to finish school. She wanted her to go to rehab. She wanted her to come home. But wanting all that never made anything go differently. It just made Kaylin push her away.
Now, for her daughter, she really only has one goal. It's the same goal she has for her callers. Don't die. Jessie's serious about this goal, and this one goal only. She literally has a tattoo on her forearm that's a bird taking flight. It's carrying a banner on its beak with a single word on it. Fucks. As in, I don't give a fuck. My fucks are flying away.
Jessie told me this one story about a time Kaylin pulled up in front of the house with a bag of dope and a couple of friends. It was late at night, just Jessie and her husband at home. Kaylin called her from the driveway.
They came in, and she watched as her daughter injected herself at her kitchen table. I had so many questions about this approach. I'm a parent. I know how hard it is to stop wanting things for your kids, stop protecting them, stop pushing them towards some imagined better future. The implications of abandoning that wanting were so radical to me. I asked, what if Kaylin never stops using drugs?
Do you even see her no longer using permanently as a goal?
You would just literally ride around town looking for her?
Showing 181–200 of 236 · page 10 of 12
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