BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — 20 people died of overdoses in Buffalo's Broadway neighborhood in the first six months of 2024, according to data from the Erie County Office of Harm Reduction.
Gabrielle Reh said there was a time when she was struggling with substance use disorder and could have ended up among those lives lost.
From 2018 to 2021, she was addicted to opioids and even survived an overdose of fentanyl.
“I didn't know I overdosed until I came to," she told me. "And then at that point, I was more upset because my high was gone....and that's the sick part.”
Reh said that during her struggle with substance use disorder, she would go to the Broadway area to get her drugs.
“I'd see a lot out here," she said while standing outside the Broadway Market. It worries her to hear there's been a spike in fatal overdoses in the area.
"I think it's absolutely awful," said Reh. "It's heartbreaking because...mental health and substance use go hand in hand. Some of these people don't have the appropriate resources.”
Reh said she battled substance use disorder for about three years and then she began to receive care at a methadone clinic and worked with a peer advocate.
"I just got sick of it," said Reh. "I was at the point where I was ending up in the hospital. I had so many health problems... I wasn't taking care of it. I wasn't taking my medications. I wasn't showing up to appointments. I just wasn't showing up places and I wasn't taking care of myself."
Now, she is one year "clean from everything," and almost three years clean from heroin, she said.
She spends her time volunteering with the Western New York Missing and Unidentified Persons Network and is hoping to go back to school.
"There is a light at the end of the tunnel and you just have to get there," she said.
If you know someone battling addiction, help is available:
- Erie County's 24-hour addiction hotline: (716) 831-7007
- Free fentanyl and xylazine test strips and naloxone/Narcan:
- Call - (716) 858-7695
- Text - (716) 225-5473
You will find more information here.
