Commentary: Preventing the Next Overdose in Our Restrooms — and Our Communities

After knocking and calling out, our team member grabbed the backup key and opened the door. They immediately contacted the non-emergency line when the person they found was unresponsive. Fortunately, the non-emergency operator on the other end recognized the symptoms as an overdose. Paramedics were sent to our location and, thankfully, they were able to save the victim with Narcan.

Since this event, we’ve teamed up with the Harm Reduction Action Center to train our team members on how to recognize an overdose and administer Narcan if needed, and all five Sexy Pizza locations carry Narcan in their first-aid kits. It’s a training we appreciate having and wish to never have to use.

During these training sessions, the Harm Reduction Action Center’s executive director, Lisa Raville, shares the same statement:

Why do people prioritize public restrooms?

1. You can close the door and the cops won’t come up on you like they do in an alley.

2. They are closed off from the larger community and can’t be seen.

3. Access to water.

We’ve been taking her training for over five years now, and those facts remain the same.

Although we are happy to support where we can, our community members who use drugs need a safe option to inject that isn’t the restroom of a pizza joint. For the safety of our team members and the safety of the person injecting drugs, we ought to provide an overdose prevention center that has medical care and professionals on site, safe needles and a clean environment instead of risking a traumatic event for our team members.

Addiction is not curable by removing drugs altogether. If that were true, we’d have solved this issue long ago. In understanding that addiction is a disease and requires special care, providing overdose prevention centers will improve our community. According to the CDC, there were over 100,000 deaths from overdoses in the year 2021 in the United States. In 2021, the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner reported the total number of drug-related deaths in the City and County of Denver was 472, compared with 370 in 2020 and 225 in 2019.

As a community, we can choose to save lives by opening overdose prevention centers.

Nicole Marquez was born and raised in California and currently resides in Denver, where she is a marketing manager at Sexy Pizza. She has over fifteen years of experience in digital storytelling and community engagement, and also worked in the media nonprofit sector for five years; she has produced films focused on mental health and addiction.

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