Dustin Lacoot of Bangor holds a sign Tuesday during a Black Balloon Day event sponsored by the Maine Recovery Action Project at the Maine State House in Augusta. The event was originally scheduled for the rotunda, however it was moved to the second floor because there were hundreds of child care workers and supporters protesting proposed cuts to a program they say has been critical to stabilizing the industry. Black Balloon Day is a national day of remembrance for lives lost to overdose. ME-RAP’s event serves as an opportunity for meaningful conversations with legislators to drive policy change and honor those who have died. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Emergency crews in Waterville are seeing an uptick in the number of people overdosing on opioids this winter, both on the streets and at the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter.

First responders and homeless shelter staff typically administer naloxone, also known as Narcan, to those who overdose and have been successful. The drug reverses respiratory and central nervous system depression caused by opioid overdose. But Narcan is not working as well on some newer drugs that are not opioids.

“What I can say with some certainty is that whatever the current batch of drugs in our community is mixed with, the naloxone is having a much slower effect on reversing the drug,” Waterville fire Chief Jason Frost said, “and in a few cases, it is not reversing the effects.”

Augusta fire Chief David Groder said officials haven’t really seen an uptick recently in the number of overdose cases in that city. But, he said, there have been periods of a week or two over the last year or two when more Narcan was needed for someone who overdosed, or Narcan was not as effective, because Xylazine, a nonopioid, was cut into the drugs taken.

“We could use Narcan and get them breathing again, but they don’t regain consciousness as they normally would,” Groder said.

Katie Spencer White, CEO of the Waterville homeless shelter, said shelter officials have seen an increase in overdoses and overdose acuity in their warming center population. During the week of Feb. 17, the center’s team reversed three overdoses in 24 hours, she said.

“Last winter, we reversed over 50 overdoses,” she said.

The shelter is developing an onsite Outpatient Patient Program, an intensive program for people with substance use disorder and mental illness, and the first group will begin in a few weeks, White said.

“MaineGeneral closed their program after a retirement late last year, so options for our guests have been limited, to say the least,” she said. “It is very unusual for a shelter to offer IOP (intensive outpatient program), but with no vouchers in the state and length of stays lasting six months or longer, we need to remove barriers and offer this for people who need it.”

She noted the University of California San Francisco recently released a study that details the unmet need for treatment for those who are homeless.”

The Waterville shelter’s new outpatient program is eligible for MaineCare reimbursement and the majority of shelter guests are MaineCare recipients or MaineCare eligible, White said. The cost to operate the program is about $100,000, and of that amount, nearly 90% is for staffing. The program provides participants with 12 hours of intensive outpatient programming per week and lasts 12 weeks, White said.

Courtney Gary-Allen, executive director of the Maine Recovery Access Project based in Augusta, notes that in 2024, there were 490 accidental overdose deaths in Maine, according to the Maine Drug Data Hub. Total nonfatal drug overdoses reported in Maine last year were 8,045. Of that number, 3,676 were reported by emergency rooms, 2,609 from EMS officials, 1,543 from community reversals of overdoses and 217 from law enforcement.

Like other Waterville and Augusta officials, Gary-Allen said she said Xylazine is not an opioid so it doesn’t respond to Narcan as other drugs do.

She said when oxycontin was determined to be harmful, doctors weren’t able to prescribe as much. Then heroin entered the picture, then fentanyl. Now, Xylazine has emerged as a drug of choice and people are trying to find solutions for how to keep people alive with tools that reverse the effects of the drug.

“Every time we try to take away one substance, a new, more dangerous substance emerges,” Gary-Allen said. “We’re in the fourth wave of the overdose crisis in Maine.”

“I think that overall, nonfatal overdoses are not on the rise and that we need to continue to invest in recovery treatment and harm reduction services here in central Maine.”

DANGEROUS DRUGS

Some overdose deaths in the United States have been found to be linked to Xylazine, a sedative or tranquilizer being found in the U.S. illegal drug supply, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many people may not be aware of the presence of Xylazine in drugs, which causes it to be dangerous, officials say. Veterinarians use Xylazine to sedate or relax animals.

Groder, the Augusta fire chief, said the number of people recorded as having overdosed in the city, and to which rescue workers administer Narcan, is skewed because Narcan is issued to families, homeless people and others at no cost and they also administer it to overdose victims.

“That would decrease our call volume,” Groder said. “It’s rare for us to show up at an overdose and somebody has not received Narcan before we get there,” Groder said.

He said emergency crews respond to overdoses and see used Narcan canisters all over the ground.

Staff Sgt. Eric Lloyd, the Augusta Police Department’s bureau chief for information services, issued overdose statistics for 2023, 2024, and so far in 2025. The numbers are generated by police who identified in their police reports that incidents they responded to were suspected opioid overdose events. The statistics, Lloyd said, do not reflect any information issued by fire/rescue workers who responded to those incidents along with police.

Lloyd’s report reflects that of 3,082 police reports drawn, or written and submitted, in 2023, 15 were designated as involving suspected overdoses; in 2024, of 2,936 reports submitted, 15 involved suspected overdoses; and so far this year, of 452 reports, three involved suspected overdoses.

Maj. Jason Longley, Waterville Police Department spokesperson, said the city has responded to 30 overdoses so far in 2025, of which 13 occurred at the homeless shelter. Waterville Fire-Rescue Department responded to 46 calls at the homeless shelter in January alone this year, which is a significant increase since the warming center opened there this year, Longley said. Last year, the city responded to 50 overdoses in January and February, he said.

Everett Flannery, EMS deputy chief of the Waterville Fire-Rescue Department, said historically, increases in response to overdoses occur in the winter when the homeless shelter warming center is open.

“Currently, about half of our ODs are coming from there,” Flannery said. “Numbers don’t look as bad as a year ago but all of a sudden we’ve seen an uptick for this winter as it relates to opioid ODs.”

Flannery’s records reflect the  number and description of calls involving alcohol, opioids and other drugs the department responded to in 2023, 2024 and so far in 2025. They do not show an increase but that could be due in part to the fact that more Narcan is used by nonemergency personnel on overdose victims as described by Groder, the Augusta fire chief.

FUTURE WATERVILLE, AUGUSTA PROGRAMS

The Waterville homeless shelter hired Colleen Madigan, a social worker, to oversee clinical operations and supervision of staff in the new, intensive outpatient clinical recovery/sobriety program, according to White, shelter CEO. Madigan is a former state representative and senator.

Program staff are required to have enhanced qualifications to work with those who are addicted and have mental illnesses, White said in an email. The shelter is partnering with Common Ground Friends, an organization that holds the behavioral/addiction health license necessary to operate the program, she said.

Homeless people struggle to find successful recovery programs and that issue is controversial in the shelter community, as they usually don’t have access to clinical staff due to lack of funding, she said. Also, the shelter’s mission is to get people off the streets and into a safe place, “not to predicate that safety by mandating attendance in specific programs. We should not even give the appearance of it, because that in itself constitutes a barrier to getting people to come inside.”

White said the new program is possible because of a new modular unit installed last fall at the Colby Street shelter. It was paid for by Congressionally Directed Spending, with the advocacy of U.S. Sens. Angus King and Susan Collins, she said.

“Because we have this space, we can deliver far more in the way of recovery, as well as healthcare services to people who are desperately underserved and disproportionately impacted by chronic illness and overdose, including death,” White said.

“This is the kind of innovative programming we need in communities like Waterville, where we have to rely on partnerships and creativity to meet the needs of our people. But we need small, community-based nonprofits like ours to step up and fill in gaps left by larger providers like MaineGeneral who have pulled out of Waterville. As long as we are able to bill MaineCare, the program will run.”

In Augusta, the Maine Recovery Access Project plans to open a community recovery center in the basement of the Edwards Inn at 53 Water St.

Gary-Allen, the Project’s executive director, said the Access Center will be a resource for people seeking recovery at all levels, including those moving from active use to long-term recovery. The center will help connect people to resources for treatment, help them find housing and jobs, and serve as a storage place for their belongings. The center will disburse naloxone and invest in harm reduction, offering peer support and going into the community to reach out to those who are homeless. A syringe services program also will be offered.

“We hope to be open by June of this year,” Gary-Allen said.

The center is possible through a grant from the Maine Recovery Council which oversees opiate settlement funds received through a lawsuit. Maine will receive $120 million over the next 18 years from those funds and the Access Center will receive $500,000 over the next two years, she said.

Gary-Allen has been in recovery 10 years herself, and has 25 years experience working on the opiate crisis. She was 19, pregnant with her second son and using heroin every day when she reached out for help and received it from a syringe program at MaineGeneral Health, she said. She entered MaineGeneral’s New Horizons’ Program and months later and sober, she gave birth to her son, she said.

She said she thinks it is important to highlight that, when she was ready to ask for help, the community had the resources she needed, including education, a detox bed and housing.

“All these things were available to me, which is not true for most people,” she said. “This city invested in me and I want to reinvest in this community. I believe in helping to keep people alive until they are able to move on.”

Now 32, Gary-Allen is an Augusta city councilor, has an undergraduate degree in substance abuse treatment, a masters in public policy and is a law student at the University of Maine School of Law.

The Access Center, she said, will be able to serve at least 50 people a year.

“I’m particularly excited about the location, Edwards Inn,” she said. “I believe that we need to be in places where people are and there people living in the Edwards Inn, and on Water Street.”