How Houstonians are helping those suffering from overdoses

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — What would you do if you came across somebody suffering an overdose? A local nonprofit, the African American Male Wellness Agency, is teaching Houstonians how to save people from overdosing and is focusing on serving older Black men, a group that studies show has limited access to healthcare.

On a typical afternoon in Houston, you’ll find men and women gathered downtown.

“I just lost two friends to an overdose, so yeah, I worry about it every day,” Houstonian Tenisha Carter said. “Especially because they are so young.”

“This is where I started at. This is the slab where I actually slept at, got high at, every day, this is where I slept at, homeless,” Curtis Young, a U.S. Army veteran who is 18 years sober, said.

Young’s work partner, Shawn Allison, is 11 years sober. Allison became addicted to codeine when he was just nine years old and sold drugs for most of his life.

“I can talk about it because I drank it and I sold it and I know it will kill you also,” Allison said. “A lot of people I served the codeine to, I go and give them Narcan and tell them, ‘hey man, it’s time to get off it.’”

Its generic name is Naloxone, a nasal spray that can quickly reverse the effects of overdoses from opioid pain medication, heroin, and fentanyl, and other drugs, like marijuana, police say, that could be laced with them. The most common brand is Narcan. You don’t need a prescription, but the spray is not usually covered by insurance, and it can cost hundreds of dollars in stores.

While the boxes Young and Allison hand out are free, the challenge is convincing people they need them.

“The pushback I get from trying to get people Narcan, I didn’t get that same pushback when I was in the streets selling drugs,” Allison said.

They work for the African American Male Wellness Agency, which provides physical and mental health services to a group of Houstonians, studies show, who are less likely to have access to medical care.

The nonprofit recently received a $1 million grant from the Harris County Health Department. Some of that money is going toward distributing Narcan.

“As quickly as we can get it, we’re getting it out to the community,” Dr. Donnell Cooper, the group’s Executive Director, said. “And that’s not only within our opioid crisis community. We’re getting out certifying police officers, certifying companies, restaurants, nightclubs.”

“There is a lack of trust with the community and going to the doctor, going to the hospital, reaching out for help when help is needed,” Dr. Jocelyn Williams, a program manager with the African American Male Wellness Agency, said.

According to the National Institutes of Health, overdose deaths went up nearly five times between 2015 and 2023 for Black men 55 and older. In 2023, deaths for older Black men were nearly triple the national average for that age group. Both national and state health statistics show overdose deaths decreasing in 2024 and 2025, but statistics show overdose rates among older Black men are still increasing, and that trend is expected to continue.

“Each person’s story is different,” Shante Francis, the executive Director of Meet the Streets, a nonprofit that works with the agency, said. “I don’t think of it in a sense of what someone is doing to themselves because if I don’t know their story, then we don’t know why somebody is making the decisions they make.”

Employees and volunteers understand those stories because so many of them have lived their own versions.

Allison was serving his fifth prison sentence when his father died. That loss is what finally got him sober.

“That was the straw that broke it,” he said. “I had to come home and see my dad in a box.”

For Allison and Young, the work now is about building futures, both for themselves and those around them. But it’s still shaped by a shared past.

“We started talking, and I instantly knew who he was,” Allison laughed. “Of course, he said ‘yeah, you weren’t that big back then,’ because I was skinny.”

“I look at him and come to find out how God works. This is my ex-dealer. This is who I got my drugs from,” Young said.

“Who better than us? We come from the street, we know the lingo and they see us they know I was out there selling, he was out there using. Now we’re in the same community, letting them know that change is possible,” Allison added.

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