LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Louisville man carries a trauma kit in his car full of things like band-aids and aspirin, but he said the newest tool added to his kit helped him save a life.
Now he wants others to carry it as well.
"I never thought of all the things in that bag, that Naloxone would be one of the things that I would be pulling out using," said Charles Pemberton.
It started as a regular afternoon for Pemberton.
"I was driving my son home from school," Pemberton said.
The day quickly changed into a moment he saved someone's life.
"After the second dose, she revived and became conscious," Pemberton said.
Pemberton was in the car driving when he saw out his window, a fast food employee, frantically looking for help. He pulled over, and learned that an unconscious woman in a car had likely overdosed.
"Between the training and especially the tools that I had, I was able to administer two doses of Narcan," Pemberton said.
Pemberton had added naloxone to his tool kit a few months prior to this situation. He said as a licensed professional clinical counselor, it was his responsibility to carry the tools he knows how to use.
"The worst thing would be to have knowledge of how to do something, and then not have the tools," Pemberton said.
Now he is encouraging others to carry naloxone and learn how to potentially save lives.
"I've been in situations where I've been the first person to talk to people about a substance abuse, or I've been probably the 50th, I don't know where they're going to get that message, but we need to be able to offer them that chance," Pemberton said.
As fentanyl, a strong opioid, becomes more prevalent in pills and substances people have access to, experts said naloxone is becoming an addition to more and more first aid kits.
"Overdoses have become the modern day emergency," said Kristen Breton.
Breton works for U.S. World Meds, creator of ZIMHI, a tool that injects a dose of naloxone. She said parents, police, and schools should keep it on hand.
"There really is no discrimination in this disease and who can accidentally die," Breton said. "That's why we're trying to say that having this doesn't reinforce the negative stigma, having naloxone embraces the fact that we're trying to make a social problem better," Breton said.
Both Breton and Pemberton hope the more education about naloxone, the more lives that can be saved.
"That could be the difference in life and death," Pemberton said.
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