Amid a surge in deaths, a safe place to get high — and to avoid an overdose
NEW YORK — Kristina Peterson anxiously tapped the heels of her boots on the tile floor inside the brightly lit lobby. Moments earlier, she had given her date of birth to an intake coordinator and answered an inquiry about the drug she planned to use.
"Heroin," she said, referring to the tiny glassine envelope stamped "Off White" tucked inside her black purse.
For much of the last decade, Peterson has been hooked on heroin, her addiction becoming increasingly severe and public. Occasionally, she has shot up in quiet corners of subway stations as she waited for the E train back to the apartment where she lived in Queens. She sought to battle her addiction by taking methadone, but soon relapsed and was rushed to an emergency room after she overdosed in a park a few blocks from an elementary school.
"This is nothing I'm proud of," she said on a recent afternoon while sitting inside an overdose prevention center, one of two in New York City that are the first authorized by a local
