Stephen Murray, MPH, NRP
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stephen-murray.com
Stephen Murray, MPH, NRP
@stephen-murray.com
7.4K followers 4.8K following 270 posts
Husband & dad / Director of SafeSpot Overdose Hotline/ Paramedic from This American Life Ep809 The Call / Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor Boston University School of Public Health / VIEWS MINE!

http://stephen-murray.com
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stephen-murray.com
Here we go again! Typical dangerous misinformation in this article.

The symptoms experienced: “shaky hands, dizziness, and hot flashes.”

None of these are symptoms of fentanyl overdose. This article also reinforces myths around Halloween candy fentanyl toward the end.
October 29, 2025 at 8:18 PM
stephen-murray.com
“In case no one has told you lately, you have value. Your contributions to this world have value. Your life has value. What you do for yourself and the people around you matters.”

#overdose #recovery #recover #recovered #drugpolicy #harmreduction #harmreductionsaveslives #harmreductionislove
October 26, 2025 at 9:01 PM
stephen-murray.com
Come free-sub to my Substack! substack.com/@stephenhrnr...
October 26, 2025 at 4:50 PM
stephen-murray.com
“Detectives say traffickers are intentionally making fentanyl in candy-like forms to attract children and young adults in an effort to drive addiction.”

Drugs attract young adults because drugs are awesome, offer an escape from violent end stage capitalism, fill mental health treatment voids…
October 5, 2025 at 1:38 PM
stephen-murray.com
Something to keep an eye on — product moving through FDA fast track for “treatment of acute methamphamine intoxication.” Research is funded by NIH/NIDA.

Press release is here: www.prnewswire.com/news-release...
September 30, 2025 at 7:18 PM
stephen-murray.com
We seem to be getting a new flood of these stories... I searched all the available info — there is no discussion anywhere of the symptoms the officer allegedly experienced and no bodycam footage on any of the news stories. We can safely say that a wet soggy bag of dope is not going to go airborne.
September 30, 2025 at 1:34 AM
stephen-murray.com
No… they didn’t. Fentanyl misinformation is now an international phenomenon.

Paging @ryanmarino.bsky.social
84° LFY.coml ACADIANANS LOCAL NEWS LEADER • lo buenol ANUA seno tenta conmigo cormigo uenta conmigo MÃS CHIHUAHUA más de lo bueno MAS CHIHUAHUA más de lo buenc cuenta conmi conmigo MAS lo bueno uenta conmig. enta MAS CHIHUAHUA más de lo bueno lo be LOCAL 2 state police officers overdose on fentanyl during drug seizure by: Julian Resendiz Posted : 5222, 202510163MM EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) - Two state police officers in Chihuahua, Mexico, are recovering in a hospital after becoming ill while conducting a drug seizure. The two unnamed officers entered a home late in Chihuahua City last week to arrest drug suspects
September 23, 2025 at 2:59 PM
stephen-murray.com
It’s absolute bullshit to say you can’t help people until they stop using. We can and do work on safety, housing, health, and dignity while people use.
September 15, 2025 at 8:49 PM
stephen-murray.com
We have seen this strategy used before — I shared a while back a cop in Philadelphia doing this (I reported him and never got a response). Countless people on video giving naloxone to people who are awake. This takes it a step further and is absolutely disgusting.

sfstandard.com/2025/09/11/s...
News article: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard News Fed up with drug users, street vigilantes are wielding Narcan like a weapon' Online commenters have called the alleged use of Narcan on unsuspecting victims a "new strategy for moving bums out of your way." Health experts say it could kill. By David Sjostedt Published Sep. 11, 2025 • 6:00am
September 13, 2025 at 1:01 AM
stephen-murray.com
Duolingo is on to me….
September 9, 2025 at 2:49 AM
stephen-murray.com
I spent all weekend glued to this book by @equalityalec.bsky.social — it is an ESSENTIAL read for anyone in drug policy or harm reduction spaces. I have learned so much that my brain actually might explode and I have so much work to do now
September 7, 2025 at 7:47 PM
stephen-murray.com
For the upteenth time — you are NOT having a fentanyl overdose if you feel hot, panicked, drive yourself to the hospital, receive naloxone while awake, get dizzy.

If she really felt like she was going to pass out while driving, it’s incredibly irresponsible to continue driving.
CHILLICOTHE, Ohio - A local woman said she narrowly escaped an attempted attack at a gas station after touching a door handle coated in what she believed was fentanyl, leading to her hospitalization for a suspected overdose from skin exposure. Jess Stonerock detailed the harrowing ordeal in a Facebook post Thursday, describing how she stopped at an Exxon station near the Chillicothe fairgrounds to use the restroom after picking up her sick child from a friend's house. "Once we got into Chillicothe I realized I had to use the restroom asap. So before turning on 207, I decided to just drive half a mile past to the Exxon station by the Chillicothe fairgrounds," Stonerock wrote. She noticed the station's lights were dimmed but assumed it was still open. After telling her son to lock the doors, she approached the building. "I tried to pull the door, no luck. But I felt 'dirt' on my hands after touching the handle, so I just brushed them off on my pants," she recounted. "My first thought was, 'maybe they have an outside restroom?' About 10 minutes later, while driving down Route 207, Stonerock began experiencing severe symptoms. "Ten minutes down 207 I started getting hot. I thought it was just my fight or flight senses that had locked in, but I just kept getting hotter, and then dizzier and then I felt like I was gonna pass out right there," she said. She raced to Adena Hospital. ". ....drug tested by the doctor in the E.R. and was told fentanyl does not show on their test, only opioids, but he said since I responded so well to the narcan and had the exact symptoms, he was 90% positive it was a fentanyl overdose. Stonerock was hospitalized and treated with Narcan, sharing photos of her bloody nose, arm rash and other injuries from the episode. • "We are home now, terrified but okay physically. God had his hand on us for sure," she added. "Please be aware of your surroundings. I never thought this would happen to me but it did. It can happen to you too."
September 7, 2025 at 2:57 PM
stephen-murray.com
When politicians show up at your #ioad event… remind them that almost every policy approach to overdose has made it worse and that’s by design.
Remember that when politicians come to your IOAD event that most of the drug policy approaches that have been done in the name of "ending" overdose have just made the problem worse. 1. Drug seizures - claimed to lower drug use, but we know the opposite is true. 2. Criminalization and incarceration - often framed as "saving people" by locking them up, but this only lowers tolerance and increases overdose risk at reentry. Add to that the barriers of a criminal record-family separation, housing, employment, healthcare-and you set people up for more chaotic use. 3. Coerced, forced, or involuntary treatment - for the same reasons. In the name of "saving people," we statistically increase their risk of overdose. 4. Reducing opioid prescribing - removing regulated opioids created a vacuum filled by fentanyl. This has killed hundreds of thousands and harmed pain patients who are now pushed to the illicit market or toward suicide. 5. Abstinence-based treatment and recovery - people in treatment are still rarely taught about overdose prevention or the risk of returning to use. Talking about it is seen as "triggering" or "enabling." The result: so many die within weeks or months of discharge. So what are solutions that could reduce overdose? Harm reductionists have been screaming these ideas from the rooftops for decades. Providing a regulated supply (not just for people with OUD, as is often the pitch of safe supply efforts). Ending criminalization. Opening overdose prevention centers. Getting police out of pain management decisions between a doctor and patient. Removing barriers to medication access, methadone in particular. Improving mental health care. Building a more kind and just society, one that makes it safe for people to use drugs around one another so that overdose can be spotted and reversed. Anyway... lots to think about. I miss my friends. Let's do better.
August 31, 2025 at 10:16 PM
stephen-murray.com
There is no standard lethal dose of cocaine. Overdose risk depends on many factors… route (snorted, smoked, injected), body weight, tolerance, health status, and what other substances are on board. Someone can die from a few hundred mg while some use multiple grams daily for years without issue.
Article from CNN about drug seizure stating they got enough cocaine to fatally overdose the entire population of Florida
August 30, 2025 at 1:24 PM
stephen-murray.com
Out with some of the team planting flags in Boston for #ioad - remembering our dead friends and why we are doing this work.
August 30, 2025 at 11:48 AM
stephen-murray.com
We have officially made it to the Buzzfeed-style lists chapter of the fascist takeover!
August 13, 2025 at 11:20 PM
stephen-murray.com
featured by the @adcouncil.bsky.social and @nationalcouncil.bsky.social for Start With Hope campaign — got chance to talk about wellness beyond abstinence and SafeSpot’s greatest strength is we help people feel a sense of value for being themselves.

Here is the full ad: youtu.be/Fm1vb-Q6-nU?...
August 11, 2025 at 2:35 AM
stephen-murray.com
Thanks for chatting with me in line at Starbucks @schiff.senate.gov 💪🏼
July 11, 2025 at 3:06 PM
stephen-murray.com
In case you were wondering what the numbers in parenthesis are - they are called semi-quant results. Here is an explainer.
July 3, 2025 at 3:56 PM
stephen-murray.com
This is from a single sample, sold as fentanyl, from the drug supply in Lynn, MA. This is what it looks like for government to surrender its regulatory power to the market. This is what we are subjecting our friends and family too instead of oxy or heroin. This is a policy CHOICE.
Drug checking sample: Laboratory Detected Substances Fentanyl (10) Xylazine (8) 4-ANPP (4) Lidocaine (4) BTMPS (Tinuvin 770) (3) 6-Monoacetylmorphine (3) Ethyl-4-ANPP (2) Bromazolam (2) Phenethyl-4-ANPP (trace) Papaverine (trace) Medetomidine (trace) Heroin (trace) Caffeine (trace) Cocaine (trace) Methamphetamine (trace) Acetaminophen (trace) Morphine (trace) Type Community Sample Date 05/2025 State / Group Massachusetts Location Lynn
July 3, 2025 at 2:02 AM
stephen-murray.com
None of these are overdose symptoms. This is panic causing hyperventilation. When you over-breathe, you blow off too much CO₂. First, tingling in your hands and feet, then dizziness/fainting. Your body responds by tightening airways to slow breathing, which feels like you can’t breathe/are choking.
SUFFIELD, Conn. (WFSB) - 5 staff members from the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield have been hospitalized after an inmate overdosed. At around 9:30 a.m., staff of the Walker building, which is a part of the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, responded to the cell of an inmate who was exhibiting signs of apparent overdose. The responding staff administered a dose of Narcan. The inmate was revived to the point he could be sent out in an ambulance to a local hospital for further treatment. A short time later, 5 staff members reported having symptoms of dizziness, tingling in the extremities, and feeling extremely hot. They were taken to the hospital for treatment. Connecticut state police were notified of the incident.
June 28, 2025 at 1:58 PM
stephen-murray.com
This is not the way.
June 20, 2025 at 12:04 AM
stephen-murray.com
The lack of basic medical literacy by the media is really sad.
June 18, 2025 at 7:02 PM
stephen-murray.com
We have a new paper out : “Stigmatizing content about xylazine in web-based news continues to proliferate, highlighting the need for collaborative efforts between the journalistic, medical, and public health sectors to challenge these narratives.”

Read here:

journals.lww.com/journaladdic...
June 10, 2025 at 7:51 PM
stephen-murray.com
This delivery device looks awfully familiar!
May 28, 2025 at 11:10 PM