After Louise Vincent’s Death, Nc Harm-reduction Organizations Grapple With The Void

By Anne Blythe

Though Louise Mae Beale Vincent was a female mini successful stature, she near a monumental bequest successful her 49 years.

The Greensboro autochthonal became an improbable world force, a elephantine successful nan harm-reduction activity who pushed passim her life against society’s dehumanization, isolation and rejection of supplier users. 

Vincent, a self-described on-again, off-again heroin user who battled addiction herself, was a fierce and persuasive advocator for needle exchanges, nan overdose reversal supplier naloxone, checking nan contents of thoroughfare drugs pinch a wide spectrometer and different methods to thief support group pinch addictions live truthful they person a chance astatine recovery.

The news of her decease connected Aug. 31 dealt a corporate gut punch to a wide swath of group and organizations, section and national, that activity to trim nan adverse health, societal and economical consequences of supplier use.

Michelle Mathis, a laminitis of Olive Branch Ministry, a faith-based harm-reduction statement successful Hickory, told NC Health News successful a caller telephone question and reply that she’s been struggling to process nan loss.

She was astatine nan Opioid Overdose Response Teams: Best Practices Summit successful Asheville successful early October and had to conflict backmost tears erstwhile she saw a photograph honoring Vincent’s bequest connected nan backmost of nan program.

“Louise was bare bones, raw, funny — but lived harm simplification for illustration fewer group I’ve ever seen,” Mathis said. “That was not conscionable her passion, it was her life. She conscionable had specified a magnetic personality.”

Unbridled passion

Vincent was calved connected March 15, 1976, and astatine conscionable 2 years aged she began to grounds a penchant for escapade and surviving life pinch fearless passion.

The Rev. Morris Brown, elder pastor astatine Christ United Methodist Church successful Greensboro who led nan celebration of Vincent’s life connected Oct. 5, revealed really arsenic a  mini child, Vincent raced down nan family’s steep driveway connected her Big Wheel tricycle, swerving astatine nan very end, hardly missing nan cars successful nan street.

By 6, Brown continued, Vincent had mastered “the creation of utilizing nan rotary phone,” figuring retired really to bid pizza while her parents were away.

Her “coup de grace,” arsenic he described it, came astatine nan property of 11, erstwhile she wasn’t fresh to spell to religion connected clip pinch her family. Her parents told her she would person to enactment astatine location by herself, but she was of a different mind. Somehow, she knew that taxis took group to religion for free connected Sundays, Brown said, truthful she called 1 and amazed her family astatine religion earlier nan greeting services began.

By 13, Vincent told NPR during a 2023 interview, she started utilizing narcotics and recovered it difficult to unrecorded sober agelong term.

That didn’t extremity Vincent from studying sociology astatine Greensboro College and, arsenic Brown said, building “a model that prepared her to not only deliberation about, but passionately prosecute her life’s activity — her life’s activity of addressing societal and taste inequities, group inequality and educating nan world astir nan value of harm reduction.”

Vincent besides earned a master’s grade successful nationalist health from UNC Greensboro. 

Vincent grew into a champion and advocator for nan marginalized acold beyond Greensboro and North Carolina done her activity astatine nan National Survivors Union (formerly Urban Survivors Union) and much precocious nan North Carolina Survivors Union. She built nan North Carolina tract successful Greensboro into a formidable policy-changing statement that landed her connected nationalist and world stages.

In summation to nan galore harm-reduction conferences wherever she was a sought-after speaker, Vincent said earlier nan U.S. Congress and nan United Nations. She tin beryllium seen, too, connected a CNN “Under nan Microscope” segment, pinch physician-reporter Sanjay Gupta, administering naloxone and rescue breaths to bring a friend backmost from an overdose.

Louise Vincent rides successful a caged wagon from a harm-reduction convention to nan Mississippi River. Credit: Contributed by Michelle Mathis

Unapologetic chutzpah

In 2018, Vincent was awarded nan inaugural Dan Bigg Award astatine nan National Harm Reduction Conference, honoring her activity and paying tribute to Bigg’s pioneering power wide distributing naloxone to stave disconnected overdose deaths agelong earlier policymakers had travel astir to that measurement of thinking.

Bigg, known by galore successful nan harm-reduction organization arsenic nan “architect of naloxone distribution” successful this country, besides was a patient believer that “asking support was little important than doing what’s right,” according to nan National Harm Reduction Coalition.

Vincent, a kindred spirit, had akin chutzpah.

“She was feisty. She was brilliant,” Brown said, relaying comments he had gathered earlier nan memorial work past month. “She was a friend you ever wanted successful your corner, but if you invited her to beryllium successful your corner, you amended get fresh to perceive difficult truths — truths cipher other would utter.”

Vincent said pinch knowledge acquired from surviving a life that dealt much than its stock of blows. In 2013, she had to person a limb amputated aft she was struck by a car successful a hit-and-run. Her girl Selena died successful 2016 from an overdose while successful a rehab center. She was conscionable 19 years old.

A fewer years ago, Vincent had an adverse reaction to xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer that has progressively been recovered successful immoderate illicit supplier supplies. That led to a humor upset and chronic wellness problems that yet caused her death, The New York Times reported.

Instead of hiding nan wounds created by nan xylazine (a communal reaction), Vincent helped bring nan problem to nan forefront and called for reducing nan stigma of supplier use, partially done detailing her acquisition successful a 2021 article for a harm-reduction publication.

“Hospital argumentation and our aesculapian strategy create deadly barriers for group who usage drugs,” Vincent wrote. “We are past not capable to entree nan thief we request and are near to woody pinch life-threatening infections by ourselves.”

Fighting a stigma

Trying to do distant pinch nan stigma that supplier users face — successful their communities, successful wellness attraction accommodation and elsewhere — was astatine nan forefront of Vincent’s mission. She stood up complete and complete again to echo nan values that coursed done her: All should beryllium treated pinch dignity.

Subsequently, that cognition coursed done nan North Carolina Survivors Union.

“She was for illustration nan living, breathing heart, nan motor of our movement,” said Caty Simon, who worked alongside Vincent successful nan Greensboro organization, helping her pinch grants and sharing participants’ stories, and arsenic a chap squad personnel astatine nan National Survivors Union.

Nick Voyles, treasurer of nan union’s board, talked astir nan void created by Vincent’s absence. She was a friend, a force, a personification he enjoyed spending clip pinch whether it was doing harm-reduction activity aliases relishing nan exhilaration connected her look arsenic she tooled astir connected a pitchy skis erstwhile Vincent, her partner Don Alan Jackson and Voyles’ woman each spent a time astatine a lake.

“It’s going to beryllium boring without her around,” Voyles said. “There will ne'er beryllium a personification for illustration her again.”

Vincent “changed nan look of what’s going connected now,” Voyles said of nan harm-reduction movement. “She helped alteration argumentation … She helped alteration people’s minds. She helped alteration nan measurement group deliberation astir themselves and nan world astir them, and she was conscionable truthful effective. 

“We’re conscionable going to person 1 large gaping spread until we tin heal. It’s conscionable devastating.”

Ryann Koval, nan union’s lawman director, still brims pinch ideas she wishes she could stock pinch Vincent.

“I still aftermath up and think, ‘Oh, I should telephone Louise and inquire her astir this,’ because Louise knew everything.” Koval said. “Louise was conscionable a force. She was overmuch bigger than she appeared, and her sound was overmuch bigger.”

“I consciousness for illustration Louise could travel up pinch an thought astatine nan beforehand of a room and everyone would want to beryllium portion of that thought by nan extremity of her talking astir it,” Koval said.

Vincent, she added, “was really adjacent to each nan issues because she was not only seeing them successful our participants, she besides was surviving them and her friends were surviving them.”

Koval came to nan statement successful precocious 2020 from a intelligence wellness section not arsenic steeped successful harm reduction.

“I had ne'er erstwhile considered asking successful my education, ‘What do we do pinch nan group who don’t want help?’” Koval said. “We talked truthful overmuch successful counseling astir really to move group reasoning astir help, to getting thief and worldly for illustration that. We didn’t ever really talk astir nan group who weren’t fresh for thief yet.”

Vincent opened Koval’s eyes to “the group that our counseling world would sometimes opportunity are ‘treatment resistant,’ aliases ‘aren’t consenting to work.’” Soon she was looking otherwise astatine nan group who came to their statement seeking cleanable needles, supplier testing aliases different harm-reduction tools. 

“I’ve worked pinch them for years,” Koval said. “And I’ve seen them while they’re using, while they’re surviving different lifestyles, surviving successful and retired of chaos still progressing along, and doing amended than they were earlier — and increasing and learning caller things. I conscionable felt for illustration Louise was showing maine this world that I didn’t moreover deliberation astir before.”

Strategy backlash

Strides person been made complete nan years successful making harm simplification much wide accepted. When Vincent first embraced nan strategy, overmuch of nan activity was still being done underground. In nan 1980s, organization organizers distributed cleanable needles and knowledgeable supplier users connected safe usage practices successful consequence to nan AIDS epidemic.

A photograph from an accumulation astatine nan Museum of Modern Art successful New York that recounted nan history of nan harm simplification movement. This photograph shows activists from nan 1990s who were calling for much harm simplification policies to trim nan dispersed of HIV. Credit: Rose Hoban / NC Health News

Health and societal work systems slow warmed to nan strategy. Over time, policies person evolved to grow entree to naloxone to stave disconnected overdose deaths, buprenorphine, an opioid medicine that tin really trim users’ cravings for opioids and syringe work programs.

Along nan way, though, location has been backlash. Despite nan positive experiences of different countries and a increasing assemblage of research, immoderate contend harm-reduction strategies nonstop nan incorrect connection and enable, aliases moreover encourage, supplier use. Others claim nan programs lead to much criminal activity.

This summer, President Donald Trump issued an executive order connected homelessness that calls for nan elimination of constituent usage upset backing for “programs that neglect to execute capable outcomes, including alleged ‘harm reduction’ aliases ‘safe consumption’ efforts that only facilitate forbidden supplier usage and its attendant harm.”

“That’s not thing we haven’t dealt pinch before,” Koval said. “There’s ever been a contingent of group who’ve been of this persuasion, and there’s a different measurement to speak astir it to thief it make much consciousness to them. A batch of that is we are helping group enactment live agelong capable to determine to retrieve if they can.”

Vincent, according to Koval, had a gift of breaking analyzable topics down to make them easier to understand and embrace. Koval picked up immoderate of those strategies from Vincent, explaining that she tries to find analogies that mightiness resonate pinch group who don’t usage drugs.

“Some group mightiness beryllium capable to understand it much pinch food,” she said. “Some group mightiness beryllium capable to understand it much pinch work, even, and moving excessively much. Some group mightiness beryllium capable to understand it much pinch different things that they overindulge in.

“Food is simply a bully 1 because nutrient you can’t do without,” Koval continued. “So you can’t stop. There’s truthful galore habits, truthful galore things that shape astir nan things we do that it’s ne'er conscionable arsenic elemental arsenic conscionable stopping.”

Vincent stressed nan value of organization successful confronting these challenges — whether it’s while trying to flooded eating disorders, bad activity habits aliases supplier use. 

“When group person been kicked retired and put retired of each location connected nan artifact — and that to immoderate seems like, ‘Well that should make them alteration their life,’” Koval said. “That besides could make them usage until they die.”

By providing a community, Koval said, nan Survivors Union tries to thief group get to a spot “where they person dream and powerfulness to determine what they want to do for themselves.”

That way, “it’s not personification telling them they person to,” Koval added. It has to beryllium “something that makes consciousness for them.”

“That’s really you unrecorded agelong word … if it’s thing you bargain into and it’s thing that makes consciousness for you successful that clip and successful that space.”

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