Hundreds in Bangor commemorate International Overdose Awareness Day
BANGOR- For this year’s International Overdose Awareness Day, hundreds of people consisting of local and state advocates, people who know someone who is going through recovery, or people who are going through recovery themselves all got together to do a vigil and candle lit march.
People ended up marching from Pickering Square to Second Street’s Together Place Peer Recovery Center.
“It’s sort of a multi-faceted day where we come together in community to mourn and grieve collectively, to share stories of hope and recovery and really demand action from our government, from our communities and from each other,” said Health Equity Alliance’s Director of Advocacy Whitney Parrish.
After the march, if they felt comfortable, people from the community got up to speak about the struggles of addiction
In the Maine Attorney General’s Drug Death report, for the first quarter of 2020 drug overdose deaths have significantly increased, with 127 Mainers losing their lives.
That’s a 23 percent increase over the final quarter of 2019.
Together Place’s Executive Director Sean Faircloth said while it’s encouraging many people showed up for the vigil, because of that increase in those numbers, there’s still a lot of work to be done.
“We’re really overwhelmed and pleased with what we saw this evening but even more important is that we’re really setting forth a plan for the future to make us even stronger and because Eastern Maine and particularity this section of the city is hit so hard, we’re asking the entire community to come together and not say, ‘That’s that neighborhood over there’, but to say ‘We’re going to directly help out’,” Faircloth said.
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