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Matt Darcy cannot remember much of his heroin overdose, other than it hit him like a brick.
He was 19 years old and hanging out at a friend's house, having just finished a stint in prison for aggravated robbery.
"It felt like my entire body had been thrown out," Mr Darcy said.
"It was cold, I felt sick. All I remember is nothing."
When he came to, hours had passed, and he was covered in vomit and wrapped in blankets.
It took him four days to recover.
Mr Darcy also credits his recovery to the support of his loving wife, Nikki. (Supplied: Nikki Darcy)
Mr Darcy said he first tried heroin in prison, but had never injected it until the day he overdosed.
"It's scary as hell," he said.
"That could have been the end of me … Once you're gone, you're gone."
While he struggled with methamphetamine addiction for a couple of years, he never used a needle again.
Today, he lives with his wife and two little boys in the town of Donnybrook, 200 kilometres south of Perth.
He has been clean for more than five years.
But not everyone gets a second chance.
A recent Pennington Institute report revealed Western Australia has had the highest rate of unintentional drug-induced deaths in Australia for more than a decade.
Between 2004 and 2022, the rate almost quadrupled to 9.3 per 100,000 people.
Australia has some of the highest rates of opioid dependence and overdoses in the world. (ABC South West: Bridget McArthur)
Calls for life-saving drug to be more accessible
Naloxone can reverse an overdose and prevent death if administered quickly enough, with no evidence of long-term side effects, according to the World Health Organisation.
It works by displacing opioids from the brain receptors of someone who's overdosed to restore breathing, and has been around for decades.
Yet opioid-related overdose deaths have continued to climb in Australia.
Doors Wide Open is a community support organisation in Bunbury. (ABC South West: Amelia Searson)
Doors Wide Open is one of many addiction support services advocating for the life-saving drug to be more accessible.
"If naloxone can be available in pubs, clubs and in everyone's first aid kit, then let's face it, that will prevent a lot of tragedies," chair of the Bunbury-based not-for-profit Tyril Houghton said.
Last year, the state government introduced an initiative to get it into all police first aid kids.
But Ms Houghton said drug users often did not want to call or interact with authorities for fear of criminal conviction.
Tyril Houghton says having naloxone more readily available could save lives. (ABC South West: Amelia Searson)
Naloxone postal service reaches regions
Peer Based Harm Reduction WA has been handing out naloxone kits to clients for more than a decade.
In the last financial year, 85 per cent of those kits were distributed in Perth, 14 per cent in the state's South West and just one per cent in other regional areas.
Chief executive Paul Dessauer said he hoped the recent rollout of their state-wide postal service would significantly increase naloxone's reach into the regions.
Paul Dessauer is working to get naloxone out to more regional areas. (Supplied: Nigel Brunsdon)
"If you are a person who uses drugs and you live in a really small community, you're generally very concerned about protecting your confidentiality," he said.
"You might not be inclined to go to your local pharmacy and ask for naloxone.
"But if you know that you can anonymously get it through the phone and through the post, we're hoping that'll help."
The Pennington Institute found the Gascoyne, Goldfields, Bunbury and Midwest all had accidental overdose death rates above the metropolitan average.
A naloxone postal service is getting the life-saving drug into the regions. (Supplied: Peer Based Harm Reduction WA)
Pharmacies can play a role
However, Mr Dessauer said Peer Based Harm Reduction WA primarily reached the illicit drug using community, not those taking prescribed opioids.
Pharmaceutical opioids cause around half of unintentional opioid-related drug-induced deaths in Australia.
Under the federal Take Home Naloxone (THN) program, pharmacies and approved alcohol and drug services can hand out naloxone for free without a prescription.
Since it was launched in July 2022, more than 62,000 units of naloxone have been handed out in WA — the second most per capita in Australia.
But still, many participating pharmacies do not have it readily available.
Naloxone is available over-the-counter in both an ampoule and a nasal spray. (ABC South West: Bridget McArthur)
The ABC contacted all nine pharmacies signed up to the federal scheme in Bunbury, where the highest number of accidental drug-induced deaths in regional WA were recorded between 2018 and 2022.
Five had naloxone stocked.
Even when pharmacies do have it, drug researcher Simon Lenton said it was not standard practice to hand it out with opioid-containing prescription drugs.
"There's a move across the country to have people, when they're prescribed long-term opioids … to be offered naloxone," the head of Curtin University's Drug Research Institute said.
"We know that only about two per cent of such patients are actually offered it. That's a major gap."