Rosie Boyce, community engagement and outreach coordinator Androscoggin County Peer Navigator for the Church of Safe Injection, speaks to the press Thursday before the grand opening of the church’s new peer-led recovery center The Sanctuary at 199 Main St. in Lewiston. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — The Church of Safe Injection’s new peer-led recovery community center, The Sanctuary at 199 Main St., will provide a hub for all its services and make it easier for people to access harm reduction services, such as Narcan and clean needles.

The space opened Thursday in conjunction with National Save a Life Day. The organization provided free Narcan and overdose recognition and response training Thursday morning. It debuted a Narcan vending box, which will allow people access to the emergency medicine at any time of the day for those who need it.

The space is a place where people can come for help, whether they are still in active use or if they are in recovery, according to Rosie Boyce, Community Engagement and Outreach Coordinator Androscoggin County Peer Navigator.

“As harm reductionists, we are firm in our belief that people are not disposable and we are here to meet (people using substances) on whatever phase of their journey they are in,” she said.

The organization serves about 450 different individuals on a monthly basis, according to Co-director Zoe Brokos. Last year the group served just over 1,200 different people total.

There are two main areas in The Sanctuary where trained peer support workers can work and where peer support services can operate, according to Boyce. Some of those services include support groups, employment resources, cooking classes, yoga, clothing closet and wound care.

The Sanctuary operations are rooted in the same harm-reduction principles that founder Jesse Harvey outlined when the Church of Safe Injection was established, she said. Harvey died of an overdose a little over four years ago.

There is no safe way to use drugs but there are safer ways to use them, Boyce said. She always impresses upon people using substances to not to use alone.

“On its face, there is really no safe way to use drugs nowadays,” she said. “… The only way to really make sure that you are preventing an overdose death is to not use alone and to carry Naloxone (Narcan).”

Harm reduction has come a long way in the roughly decade and a half since Boyce started her wellness journey, a term she prefers to recovery, she said. She was once in active substance use and has previously been incarcerated.

She remembers in the early 2000s when pharmacies would refuse to sell needles to people suspected of using substances and the answer to substance use was “tough love,” she said. She remembers all the unsafe ways people used to use injectable drugs.

“People who are using today, hopefully will never have to experience what it’s like to use a dull syringe or to have had a syringe so long that the numbers are worn off the outside,” she said. “… Hopefully they’ll never have to experience using, like, water sucked off their windshield or out of a mud puddle, or using things like grape soda.”

Through a different organization in Portland roughly 15 years ago, she met Brokos and it was the first time she felt like someone had treated her like she had value despite actively using substances, she said.

“It was the very first time that I can consciously remember someone knowing that I was a person who was using drugs in a chaotic fashion and still treating me like I had intrinsic value, that I wasn’t disposable and like I was welcome,” she said.

There are many people who have died over the years of an overdose and who are not around to share their stories, she said.

In recent years the state has seen a decrease in the number of overdose deaths, with 605 total confirmed and suspected fatal overdoses in Maine in 2023, a large decline compared to the 723 total confirmed and suspected fatal overdose deaths in Maine in 2022, according to information in the state’s monthly overdose reports.

Over the roughly 25 years of the opioid epidemic, opioids have pushed state and national overdose death rates higher.

Boyce largely attributes the state’s decrease in overdose deaths to the state’s Good Samaritan Law, she said. The law allows anyone to call for emergency help when someone is overdosing without getting in trouble themselves, though there are a number of exceptions to that immunity rule.

In the early days when harm reduction practices were being rolled out, there were still many barriers to the services that made people feel uncomfortable while accessing them, she said.

It is often difficult to build trust with people who use substances because of the stigma and fear of getting into legal trouble, Boyce said. All of the staff at the Church of Safe Injection are people with substance use experience. It helps to build trust when the support staff have firsthand experience with substance use themselves.

“I came into this work because it’s important to have people with lived experience,” Boyce said. “It’s important to have people that speak, you know, that talk the talk and walk the walk because … trust is something that is not easily gained amongst people that are actively using drugs because of the law enforcement component and the stigma that readily exists in the community.”

Operating hours are still being worked out, but Boyce said the center’s hours will likely be from 12 to 6 p.m. on Sundays. People who struggling with alcohol or drug use can dial 211 for help.