Are everyday people, like you and me. Reporter the medical director for the San Francisco fire department, teaming up with the department of health to launch the ms six. One paramedic and one outreach worker, and the mission is to reach the high risk users, the 911 system connection with service. One thing is that people want help. People that have had an acute overdose or 4 to 5 times more likely to have another one that is fatal. Reporter nickless is a young man that says he comes from a good family, and now wakes up every morning. I like to get high, and that is what i chose. Anything that happens to me, jail, freezing cold at night, starving, it is worth it. Narcan is a lifesaver. Reporter narcan reduces and reverses the effect of the opioid overdose. We have had over 2000 overdose is reversed in the city of San Francisco sense 2003. Reporter the nonprofit with that help of the Public Health coordinates the use of narcan in the city. The idea is that you get is much into the high risk of community as possible, and flood it in the hopes that anytime and overdose is witnessed, someone has one. Reporter in the year 2000, 120 people died in San Francisco from heroin overdose. And in 2014 the number dropped to 30. Despite that, the argument out there is whether or not narcan allows the addiction cycle to continue. I disagree. I think that having the fire extinguisher in the kitchen is a good idea, and not more likely to light your dinner on fire. Reporter the doctor says that the heroin use has spiked in neighborhoods all over the city. Weve seen a transition, and as we have tried to clamp down on the opiate prescribing, and we have expanded the pool of those that are on opiates. Reporter they are now advising doctors not to prescribe opiates for chronic pain in most situations. Some of these people that are dependent on the opioids, they end up reverting to the street opiates. The market for the opioids has changed, and there are a lot more opioids on the street and there used to be. Reporter a 200 increase in the rate of Overdose Deaths involving opiates, the Drug Overdose reached a new peak in 2014, 47,055 people, or the equivalent of 125 americans every day. In San Francisco, the landscape looks different as the city fight back against the opioid Overdose Deaths, saving the lives is a priority. When i go to the conference is people want to hear what we are doing here. Reporter doctor Judith Martin says that the city is leading the way. Offer medication and treatment on demand, sameday access. Reporter in saving lives, 62 reported bystander new lots own naloxone reported. 599 reversals and 400 rescues by the paramedics. Reporter the popularity is now becoming a problem. They say that the narcan is getting more expensive, and so the dope project is struggling to meet the demand of the groups that handed out for free. It is 15 per file, and each kit that we distribute has two vials, so that is 30 for one kit. If we give out thousands of year, and i care. Reporter it is frustrating because narcan has a much deeper value. We are empowering those that use the drugs, stigmatized and marginalized in the society, we are giving them a tool to take care of themselves. Reporter for nicholas clark, he says he has described and tried to get off of the heroin, as it is described for the body, mind and soul. The thing about heroin is that it never ends. The life is full of dissatisfaction. And in order to be in possession of that kind of dissatisfaction, you have to give up anything and everything you care about. It is a real ripoff. Reporter the story of opiate addiction, from the streets to the nonprofits, medics and doctors. If people dont survive, that is the tragedy. They never get a chance. Back you start asking yourself why am i even hear. Exactly, and if we are not here to help people to get a chance, then i dont know what we are doing. Reporter holding out a hand, hoping that someone grabbed hold and never let go. Coming up, and heroin is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to fighting opiate we are talking about the overdosed reversal drug narcan, or naloxone. Reporter 1 00 in the afternoon, a man gets on the public bus, finds a seat in takes a sip of his drink. And what the Surveillance Video captures next is shocking. This is the 25yearold, michael, shooting heroin into his arm, and you see the effects of the drug, and he passes out into the aisle overdosing. But he does not die, and the drug called naloxone , also known as narcan saved him. Is someone is not awake or not breathing because of the opiate, they can get the naloxone and it will snap them out of it. Reporter and because of this drug, he was able to stand and walk off the bus. But the story is the same all across the country, including in the bay area. Naloxone is given away for free, carried by the First Responders with one goal, saving lives. The opiate binds to a receptor in the brain and has the cause and effect, and the naloxone will go in and block the receptor so that the opiate cannot bind to the receptor. Reporter it comes in a nasal spray for a bye with a syringe. The First Responder or even a bystander can safely and legally sprayed the naloxone into a persons nose, or injected into a muscle. It works fast. The people wake up in a matter of minutes. Reporter and dope stands for Drug Overdose prevention education. We work to ensure that the drug users and San Francisco and any other potential overdose bystander, or someone that witnesses and overdose is equipped with the education to use the naloxone. Reporter according to the doctor with the San FranciscoPublic Health department, the side effects of the naloxone can feel awful, but it keeps the heroin addicts from dying. Nobody wants to be administered naloxone because it causes the opiate withdrawal. It is not something they like to get. You feel terrible and you are nauseated, vomiting, sweaty and you feel like you are going to die. Reporter which supporters say that it is exactly why the argument that naloxone encourages drug use is not accurate. Naloxone is an extremely uncomfortable, awful experience for people that have administered to them, and it put you into withdrawal. It makes you incredibly sick. People do not want it administered to them, and people do not use drugs excessively in order to have naloxone given to them. Reporter and although naloxone does not address the addiction, it does keep the person alive for when or if the person decides to seek help. And part of the groups goal is to educate the drug users, family and friends about naloxone because they are the people most likely to step in and save the life of someone that is overdosing. The programs or to empower people that use drugs with this tool, and they are the most likely First Responders, and they are the people there when someone is in trouble. A part of our work is about giving people respect and dignity, and to have control over their own lives. Reporter we have been talking about heroin, but there is another opiate that is reaching epidemic proportions, and most people have not even heard of it, fentanyl, 50 times stronger than heroin. Dozens of people right here in Northern California have overdosed recently without even realizing what they were taking. Back i have died about three times. It is euphoric, and you are in a literal dream state of mind. That stuff is no joke. Vietnam. Reporter this man goes by the name easy and he was working on skyscrapers, and two Car Accidents got him hooked on prescription pain pills, which led to heroin and shooting up on the streets. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin, 100 times stronger than morphine, typically given to Cancer Patients through a patch, but it is also being placed into the counterfeit prescription painkillers. They look just like the real thing. Reporter dr. David goldstein says it is hard to tell the difference. People buy them and think they are hydrocodone and they in fact have fentanyl. Reporter putting out alerts following seven fentanyl overdoses sense of march, 14 died and 52 overdoses in the sacramento area. Last summer heroin was laced with it not, hitting San Francisco heroin laced with vietnam fentanyl and it hit San Francisco hard. Eliza wheeler is manager of the dope project, and they give narcan, naloxone for free. This was the worst time of it, people were overdosing left and right. Reporter when fentanyl ravaged the city, they reversed 25 overdoses in three months. Back 325 in one summer, and that would have been a national crisis. Reporter now they are worried about another crisis because they believe that the recent overdoses are linked because the pills have a similar marking. We do not want people getting pills off of the streets. Reporter they say that fentanyl is likely produced in china, shipped through mexico. They can purchase a kilogram of fentanyl from overseas for approximately 3300 wholesale, generating over 1 million in revenue off of that kilogram of fentanyl. Reporter fentanyl is reaching all corners of the country, and in San Francisco they availability of naloxone has helped to save lives when the emergencies happen. We have the established naloxone program, and we are not seeing the death that other places are. That might kill them because little do they know that there is fentanyl in it. Reporter after living on the streets for year, easy is tired, and says he would rather be working on the skyscrapers again rather than shooting up to get high. Heroin and opioid addiction does not affect just the drug user. It impacts the family, heroin addiction can rip a family apart, and emotions fluctuate from the lows, to the highs, and back to the lows. Since her brother died of an overdose, she is shared in her book, witnessing heroin taking over the lives of the loved ones. Reporter pat was my youngest brother. The youngest of four. He was so full of life. He was funny, and a jokester, and incredibly athletic. He would jump off of a roof, out of a tree, and really so gentle, and had such a loving and sweet quality. The path that he took was something that none of us could have anticipated. What happened in early 2009 . I find out that he had been battling an addiction to painkillers, and he was a few years in at that point, but we did not know that he had switched from abusing the prescription painkillers to heroin. He overdosed more times probably than we knew about. And they were able to get him to the hospital in time, and he had a court date the next morning, and the judge ordered him into a 30 day outpatient clinic. And he was supposed to live with my mom and she would drive him to rehab, and that happened and he completed the program, and i think we thought that he was better. He wasnt. Two weeks later, he went back to la and overdosed on heroin and died. Reporter over the days and weeks, how did you feel . Was their anger toward the drug, toward your brother, toward his friends or girlfriend . Take us back to those emotions. I was completely numb. It felt like a dream, something that could not possibly be true. It is just black and dark. I think i blocked out a lot of the memories of him because it was so inconceivable to me that i could lose him. Reporter do you think that pat lost control of his life, or that heroin to control of his life . I think both. He was so young when he died, and when he started using the prescription pain killers that caused a change in his brain. At that age, the brain is not fully developed, and when you add something powerful like an opioid in the mix, it changes the brain and i think he was taken over by it. I want to understand how that happened to him, so i started going through papers, and i found a journal that he kept for many years. Reporter what did he write about . He wrote about the pain of being addicted, and how he wanted to die because it was so painful. Recently, we met heroin addicts on the street, quite the different picture. It tells two different stories but they are tied to this one drug. You have talked with other addicts out there, and do they have something, and that you have noticed in your discussions with them . Weather on the streets or in the suburbs . One thing i have noticed, even if they seem like they do not care or dont know what they are doing to themselves, or the pain they cause for others, they know. Reporter and you decided to write a book. I thought that this was a story that people need to know about. I think that my whole is that in writing the book and me talking to all of these other addicts and families, i came to an understanding bright felt like i was in a more compassionate place. And i wished i had had that compassion when my brother was still alive. I dont know that it would have changed the past, but i think it would have changed the conversation that we had around his addiction. And when people read the book and read about how awful this is for every member of the family, and everyone loves an addict, and that they can come to a more compassionate place of understanding. Reporter and if you could tell pat something seven years later, what would you tell him . I think i would forgive him. And i would forgive myself. You hear erin talking about the emotion after his death, the numbness and darkness, and yet she found the strength to put it on paper in that book to help other families going through the same situation. And it really is true that it takes a before earning enough cash back from bank of america to buy a new gym bag. Before earning 1 cash back everywhere, every time and 2 back at the grocery store. Even before he got 3 back on gas. Kenny used his bankamericard cash rewards credit card to join the wednesday night league. Because he loves to play hoops. Not jump through them. Thats the excitement of rewarding connections. Apply online or at a bank of america near you. If you would like to learn more about any of the resources mentioned today, you can find them on our website, ktvu. Com. We have posted links for you to get information welcome to this ktvu segment two special. Im can wane. Segment two allows us to dig deeper into stories you might not have heard about. One of the most popular segments. In this special, we will revisit some of the most memorable reports from the past couple of years. Including a profile of a former ktvu anchor. And a look at the beatles. The last concert at candlestick park. We begin in San Franciscos toughest neighborhood. An area plagued by poverty, crime and drug use. I spent a night alone in the tenderloin. I had on a camera under a jacket to shoot videos and would identify myself to people who agreed to talk to me. They gave some surprisingly candid answers. The Warfield Hotel sits near the corner of turkey and taylor in the heart of the tenderloin. Rooms are usually rented by the month. Even though it is in the seediest part of the city. A room here is not as cheap as you might expect. Seventy dollars a night. And this is what you get. Little furniture, a bed, sheets, i pillow, no pillowcase. It bathroom with no working life, no toilet paper. And two windows looking down on turk street. This will be my home for the night. Im told by police it is a place for heroin users. After going in and out of here for 16 hours, i never see anyone outside of their room. Just an abandoned wheelchair. On the street, in front of the hotel, i run into a woman named rita who asked me for 2. What are you doing out here . Getting high. She says she is from reno and went to school in lake tahoe. But she has been in San Francisco for most of her life, living on the streets, addicted to drugs. What kind of drugs . Correct. Crack. I have been doing it for 30 years. I wish her well as i move on. Stay safe. Take care. Down the street, i find a man who asks for 5. He calls himself, v. I dont get involved with drugs. I have a few beers. It is crazy down here. The city is too dangerous. Im too old. 39 of the citys homeless came to San Francisco from someplace else within the previous year. And the top v says he moved to your and has been looking for moved here and has been looking for work. What is your plan . Get a fulltime job and get off the street. He says San Francisco is not for him. And it is about time to leave. Go somewhere, where it is less expensive. This is for the rich only. As night falls, the energy on the streets changes. I accidentally bump into a man on the sidewalk. And it sets him off. Dont put your hands on me. I was walking buy and you ran into me. I move on where paramedics are responding to a call of shortness of breath. A firefighter tells me the 911 calls here are almost nonstop in the tenderloin. Sitting nearby is a young woman named kia with one of her dogs. She has been in the city for six years. The last seven months, living on the streets. It sounds dangerous. My boyfriend is in jail. She says she has been a heroin addict since she was 13. And a fourth of the people here say that drug and alcohol use prevent them from getting a job. She says she is thinking about going back to her family in connecticut. If you had tickets to go back, would you go back . Probably not. Because i have a drug problem. It seems everyone here has a hard luck story. Hoping for a better life while searching for a way out. But somehow, for now, stuck. I go back to the Warfield Hotel and try to get some sleep. Shortly after sunrise, it is time to check out. I ask the hotel clerk about the 10 bill he gave me for change the day before. I tried to use it at a local market and the cashier said the bill was counterfeit. They said it was not real. Morning on the streets. Some of the homeless are starting to stir. Others are covered in blankets and surrounded by personal belongings on the sidewalk. And once again, i run into rita. What did you do last night . She says she is going to an appointment to get medication. And she has a final message for me. Can i put a bug in your ear send you a message . Take care. See you later. Tonight i will never forget. Coming up, i take a dive into a dangerous sport. The prize catch the divers are the lure of fresh abalone has drawn hundreds of diverse to the coast for generations. Men willing to risk their lives to get the prized seafood. I put on a wetsuit and dove into f