This story appears in the January 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine.
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The opioid crisis exposed in photos from a hard-hit neighborhood
Photographer David Guttenfelder has documented horrors around the world, but he was shocked by what he saw on a Philadelphia street.
Fernando Irizarry’s addiction began with pain medications he took after an accident. He invited me to observe his life on Kensington Avenue, and I spent two days with him. Unable to find a usable vein in his arm, bruised from repeated injections, he asked an acquaintance to inject a slurry of discarded drugs into his neck. On the street, addicts often look out for each other, administering narcotics but also saving lives with Narcan, an overdose-reversal nasal spray.
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