Dave Watched His Rutgers Roommate Die. Then He Overdosed 4 Times Himself, On Heroin.

You’d think watching his roommate at Rutgers University die of an overdose would change Dave Dolan’s life.

Then Dave overdosed four times himself.

And each time, whoever was with him just wanted to leave him for dead.

“It is a miracle that I am alive today,” Dolan told The Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit organization promoting drug policies that are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.

“But I’ve known many people who did not make it through such situations and live to tell the tale.”

Dolan, once an honors student at Southern Regional High School in Manahawkin, is now in recovery, spending much of his time promoting New Jersey legislation that would offer protection from arrest for those who call 911 in the event of an overdose.

He’s been appearing at school forums, speaking to lawmakers and doing interviews for the Drug Policy Alliance to push Senate Bill 851/Assembly Bill 578, also known as a “Good Samaritan law.”

The legislation would help save lives and give those struggling with addiction a chance to find out that recovery is possible, he said.

“I’m in no way condoning drug use, but I think everyone’s life has value and that saving lives should always take priority over punishing behavior,“ he said in an interview on the DPA’s website.

Dolan had a promising future himself when he was admitted into Rutgers University’s prestigious Doctor of Pharmacy Program in 2002.

But the drugs were too easy to get, and too easy to use, he told The Asbury Park Press in a video (see below).

When he was a kid, he and his friends would steal marijuana from a friend’s parents. When he got to Rutgers, the drugs were “everywhere,” he told the APP.

As a sophomore, he awoke from a drug-induced sleep. He looked at his bed across from him. His roommate was dead.

“We had been partying the night before, and when I awoke, he was blue and vomit streamed from his mouth,” he said. “My other roommates and I tried to give him CPR and then, finally, after 5 minutes, called 911”

He died hours before emergency medical services arrived. There was nothing they could have done to save him. But there was something they did to protect themselves.

Dave and his friends waited five minutes before calling 911. ”We were afraid of being arrested for having drugs in our apartment,” he said.

From there, it got worse.

He went into a downward spiral that led to emotional distress, and even heavier drug use. He was addicted to drugs for at least 10 years.

When he overdosed four times, the tables were turned on him.

“Often, the people I was using drugs with would not call for an ambulance for fear that they would be arrested,” he told the DPA.

He’s known people who were thrown out of cars and apartments while overdosing by those who feared drug charges. Those abandoned people are dead now, their families left in shambles, he said.

He told the DPA that it’s “become a very real fact for me” that almost 6,000 people have died from drug overdoses in New Jersey since 2004, and more than 700 people died from drug overdoses in New Jersey in 2009 alone.

“You can recover from drug addiction, but the opportunity for recovery is lost forever in a fatal overdose,” he said.

Dolan, most recently a graduate student at Monmouth University, agrees with the medical professionals who described drug addiction as a chronic, relapse-prone illness just as diabetes and hypertension are.

“I feel like I was born to be an addict,” he said during a recent talk at Red Bank Regional High School, noting that his recovery did not get on track until he was “finally ready to pick up the tools that people were putting at my feet.”

“My recovery has brought me so much closer to my family and community, and has given me a sense of meaning and purpose in my life,” Dolan said. “I am here to tell you that there is so much hope if your child is an addict or in recovery.”