Man overdoses in Booth Library

Cassie Buchman and Mackenzie Freund

The University Police Department and paramedics were called around 6:30 p.m. Thursday night to Booth Library after a man was found in the second floor bathroom after overdosing on drugs.

UPD would not name the man who overdosed.

The man fell off the toilet he was sitting on after taking the drugs when another person walked in and called 911 after seeing the man on the floor.

UPD Officer Michael Southworth said the drug was most likely heroin or some other opiate.

The paramedics arrived and inserted an IV and injected the man with an opiate reversal drug, which saved the man’s life.

Southworth said the man is expected to have a 100 percent chance of survival.

The bathroom the man was found in was sealed after they found the man’s clothes in there along with a needle.

Southworth said this is his first case in his four and a half years at the UPD that he has seen someone overdose on this kind of drug but he has heard around the office that there has been a nationally growing trend for heroin use.

According to a graph by The National Institute on Drug Abuse, in 2013 the amount of deaths because of heroin was over 8,000 and in 2014 that number rose to close to 11 thousand.