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I-Team: Overdose Rate In Boston Jumps During COVID-19 Pandemic

BOSTON (CBS) - The memories are tough for Jeff Prescott walking the streets around Mass and Cass, a village of tents and home to dozens of homeless and people with substance use disorder. He knows what it's like because he's lived it.

"It's just not a good life, you know. It's not something you ever want to do again," he said.

MassAndCass
A tent city in the Mass and Cass area. (WBZ-TV)

Here drug use is not only open, it's rampant. "I was out on Mass Ave myself for two weeks. I overdosed at least ten times," he said.

Prescott has been off drugs for more than a year now, but records obtained by the I-Team show a spike in overdoses over the past few years.

Records show Boston EMS responded to 8,192 opioid overdose calls in the last couple of years. Most were during the pandemic shutdown, and the data suggests things are not improving as we now reopen.

So far this year, Boston EMS overdose calls are up 10% over this time last year.

"It's been awful, I would say," explained Christine Arismendi, who works at Hope House, a recovery center where people like Prescott have turned their lives around. "The beds obviously had to be reduced for COVID protocols. Programs have been shut down," she added.

Boston's Fire Department Headquarters is smack in the middle of the worst of it. The department shared records with the I-Team, showing its personnel alone took nearly 1,200 overdose calls over the last couple of years, nearly 100 right here on Massachusetts Avenue.

Prescott says it took hard work and determination to turn his life around. It's the kind of work Boston City officials vow to put into the humanitarian crisis exploding near Mass and Cass as they attempt to clean up a full-blown tent city.

At Hope House, they believe housing is the first step to recovery. "I think giving housing, and the ability to bring all the resources right to their door and offer it to them, will give them a higher success rate," Arismendi said.

Prescott is now enrolled at UMASS Boston and has a full-time job. "In under a year I went from living under a bridge, shooting drugs into my neck, to doing all these things, having my family back in my life," he said.

"There is hope. I know that we can fix this and figure it out. It'll just take some creativity," Arismendi said.

"The fact is, nobody's hopeless," Prescott said.

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