In Berkshire County, 48 people died from opioid-related overdose deaths in 2023 — up from 2022, but below the decade-high watermark of 62 deaths in 2021.
“Overdose Awareness Day, which is every August 31st is the world's largest annual campaign to end overdose. It's a chance to remember without stigma, those who have died and acknowledge the grief of family and friends that are left behind," said Gary Pratt of Rural Recovery, which operates the South County Recovery Center in Great Barrington.
While Massachusetts saw opioid-related overdose deaths drop almost 10% in 2023 to 2,125, Berkshire County’s struggle to reduce fatalities continues.
Pratt says the countywide efforts of Berkshire Health Systems’ Berkshire Harm Reduction program to install accessible naloxone boxes across the region – including a first-in-the-commonwealth vending machine with the overdose reversing drug and other harm reduction resources in North Adams – has made a major impact.
“I’m very grateful to the Bureau of Substance Addiction services for now funding three recovery centers in in Berkshire County," Pratt told WAMC. "There's the Have Hope center in North Adams, there's Living In Recovery in Pittsfield, and now there's the South County Recovery Center in Great Barrington, which is just, all three of them offer supports to people who are seeking assistance with their substance use and able to make connections and to be able to change their lives.”
The Have Hope center in North Adams opened in April with the support of the Brien Center, the county’s main behavioral health and addiction services provider.
“The members have picked everything from paint colors to flooring," said Rebecca Dodge, program manager for the member-run center. "We support all people in recovery, whatever path they may be taking, and in harm reduction. We have programming, meetings, all recovery, AA, NA, anything you can think of. We do arts, music, poetry, movie nights, karaoke to have a good time when you are in recovery. We accept everyone. We assist with housing, jobs, getting people into detox, you name it. We go with what the community here needs at the time.”
In Pittsfield, Living In Recovery has been in its new, long-term headquarters at 75 North Street in the heart of downtown for almost a year. Program Director Julie MacDonald noted that Pittsfield lost five fewer lives to opioid-related overdoses in 2023 than 2022, while still accounting for half of the county’s total fatalities.
“We need more education, we need to be able to get into the school systems more, and not even as much about delivery of Narcan, but working on changing some of the systems in place, working in more of a prevention mode instead of an intervention mode," she told WAMC. "And I don't mean by, we're going to tell you drugs are bad, because that's never worked. But how do we engage the youth? How do we actively participate in their lives, encourage them, uplift them? What can we do as a center here? What can we do as a community to embrace adolescents, and not judge them, to give them things to do with their lives, to mentor them?”
Berkshire County’s three major regions – North, Central, and South – will all mark Overdose Awareness Day with community events on Saturday.
“It'll start at the South County Recovery Center at 67 State Road at 6 p.m. We're just going to gather here for probably about 15 minutes or so, and then we'll have a spiritual speaker, and people who have lost loved ones can just connect with each other," said Pratt of Great Barrington’s South County Recovery Center. “So, at about 6:45 we're going to head down to the GB hedge – for anybody who's ever been to Great Barrington, you know there's a big hedge right on the other side of the bridge that says GB – We're going to stand out there for about an hour, and we're also going to light up that hedge with purple lights, purple LED lights for the evening and for the entirety of Recovery Month.”
Pittsfield’s acknowledgement begins with a memorial service at the Common on First Street at 6:30 p.m.
“It's to come together to share our collective grief that can be really overwhelming, whether it's a loved one, whether it's someone that works in this field that loses a lot of people that they've worked with, it's a way to come together, to not have to hide our heads in shame or to look at these things as a moral failing, as a parent or a brother or a sister or a child, or even a physician or a therapist, and to be able to say, this is real, this is our grief, and to support that," said MacDonald of Living in Recovery. “We'll have people from various faith communities, from the Muslim community, from the Christian community, from the Buddhist community. This year, we actually have a Wiccan high priestess that will be coming and joining us as well. So, and then from there, we will process over to Park Square, where we'll have our candlelight vigil, where we'll read off the names. So, if anyone wants to send us names or pictures, they can do that, but we do need it by Thursday at the latest of this week to livinginrecoverypittsfield@gmail.com, and we'll read those names off at the Park Square while we do our candlelight vigil.”
Dodge of the Have Hope center says North Adams’ Overdose Awareness Day ceremony will start at 6 with a standout in front of city hall followed by a commemorative walk downtown.
“There will be a memorial wall where people have a chance to leave a memory of a loved one also, and it will be portrayed on our board," she told WAMC. "We'll have speakers and time to leave a thought for a loved one. We will also have it light up purple. We have some light bulbs here at the Have Hope Peer Recovery Center we are handing out, and we ask the town, also, if they if they could get a purple light bulb to display on their porch or in their home to try to light the town purple. That's a significant color for Overdose Awareness Month, and we ask that the whole town and Berkshire County light their home or business or anything in remembrance of a person that was lost due to overdose.”
Between 2013 and 2023, over 21,000 people in Massachusetts died as the result of an opioid-related overdose.
