I’ve worked at Preble Street in Portland, Maine, for 26 years and never thought I’d see the day when our social workers are reversing opioid overdoses on a regular basis.
In my first 22 years here, we had no overdoses. Zero. Now every eight days we find someone on a bathroom floor, lips blue, not breathing.
Preble Street is a private non-profit agency founded in 1975, beginning as a social work training site for college students and activists. From the start, we’ve carried forward a set of principles, foremost among them that there is value in all people, that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and that our social work can and should be layered throughout with love and compassion.
