Humanizing Drug Overdoses – A Liberatory Harm Reduction Comic

Humanizing Drug Overdoses in Colorado – A Liberatory Harm Reduction Comic is a community-engaged arts-based research project exhibited in the Journal of American Folklore a peer-reviewed anthropology publication in the Summer 2025 Global Quarterly Edition.Humanizing Drug Overdoses in Colorado: A Liberatory Harm Reduction Comic Made with Sex Workers and People Who Use Drugs focused on overdose, stigma, Harm Reduction, sex work, and drug user health in Colorado. The project was co-led by Dr. Otañez, Craft, Burges, Talley, and Guerrero and centers Betsy’s overdose survival story through the character Chloe, whose narrative reflects the grief, trauma, survival, and lifesaving knowledge carried by people people who use drugs and sex workers who often serve as first responders in the overdose crisis.

About the method

This comic grew out of the Naloxone Champion project through a community-engaged research partnership with Anthropologist and CU Denver Professor Dr. Marty Otañez. Grounded in arts-based and ethnographic methods, the project uses visual storytelling to document overdose survival, community care, and the sacred knowledge carried by people directly impacted by overdose.

For this project, I chose to share another personal overdose survival story through the character Chloe. The team also worked with artist Ven Talley to create the comic and visuals, translating lived experience into image, dialogue, and narrative — making visible the grief, trauma, stigma, and survival knowledge that often remains outside public health data.

Rather than treating people who use drugs and sex workers as subjects of study, this method positions us as narrators, knowledge-holders and first responders whose expertise is essential to understanding and mitigating the harm of the overdose crisis.