Training
Learn How to Save a Life
Here’s How to Save a Life with Naloxone.
Naloxone (commonly known as Narcan®) is a life-saving medication that can reverse an opioid overdose. If someone’s breathing has slowed or stopped due to heroin, fentanyl, or prescription opioids, naloxone can restore normal breathing within minutes. It’s easy to use, fast-acting, and safe—even if you’re unsure whether opioids are involved.
Reading this page is not the training
Under the Ontario Naloxone Program for Pharmacies, the training has to be given to every person, every time, one to one and in real time, by a pharmacist. A website cannot do it and neither can a video. So when you reserve a kit through Naloxone at Home you book a short call — about ten minutes — and that call is the training. Everything on this page is here so you can go over it again afterwards, and so somebody else in the house can read it too.
What an opioid overdose looks like
- Breathing is very slow, very shallow, or has stopped
- Lips or fingertips are blue or grey
- They cannot be woken up, even by shouting or a hard knuckle rub on the breastbone
- Pupils are tiny, skin is cold and clammy
- Choking, gurgling or snoring sounds
The five steps
- Shout and shake. Try to wake them. Rub your knuckles hard on the centre of their chest.
- Call 911. Say the person is not breathing. Ontario’s Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act protects you from charges for simple possession if you call and stay.
- Give naloxone. One nasal spray into one nostril, or one 1 mL injection into the upper arm or outer thigh muscle — through clothing is fine.
- Rescue breathing or chest compressions. Use the barrier mask in the kit. Keep going.
- Is it working? If there is no change after 2–3 minutes, give the second dose. Stay with them until paramedics arrive — naloxone wears off in 20 to 90 minutes and the overdose can come back.
These steps follow the Government of Ontario’s own five-step naloxone instruction insert, the same one that is printed in every kit.
Watch it again
Training Videos
Learn how to recognize and respond to an opioid overdose with our step-by-step training videos.
Watching these is not the training. Under the Ontario Naloxone Program for Pharmacies the training has to be given to every person, every time, live by a pharmacist — that is the short call you book when you reserve your kit. These videos are here so you can go over it again afterwards.
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