Last year, overdose deaths in Sangamon County decreased for the first time since 2019. So far, 2026 is on pace for another decrease – but fatal overdoses are still expected to outpace other unexpected deaths such as suicide and homicide.
Tiara Standage, founder of harm reduction nonprofit Intricate Minds, thinks her organization’s efforts over the past two-and-a-half years have something to do with the county’s declining number of overdose deaths.
“We keep people alive – we provide life-saving materials for people to stay alive,” Standage told Illinois Times. “We see people in active use. We see people who don’t use drugs at all that may have other barriers in their life… they know that they have a safe space to be.”
She reiterated the idea that “there will always be people who use drugs” and they don’t deserve to suffer a preventable death.
Standage, who lost her mother to an overdose, founded Intricate Minds in March 2023. It was initially located on South Grand Avenue East before relocating to a storefront at 619 North Grand Ave. the following year.
Standage recently opened a second Intricate Minds location downtown inside First Presbyterian Church for people experiencing substance use disorder to get safe supplies like Narcan, drug testing strips, hygiene kits, condoms, menstrual products and more. In September alone, her nonprofit provided service and supplies for nearly 400 individuals.
The downtown location is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. while the main location on North Grand Avenue is open from noon through 5:30 p.m. on Monday and Wednesday and from noon through 9 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The north-end location is closed on Fridays.
“There’s a common misconception that harm reduction is enabling people who use drugs, but people who use drugs – if they choose to use drugs – they’re going to use drugs anyways,” she said. “All we’re doing is making sure that they have access to safe supplies.”
Intricate Minds will also help connect people to whatever social service an individual may want to utilize, including medication and recovery clinics.
“I’ve given people clean needles, and I’ve taken people to enter into treatment. It’s just all about where they’re at in their journey, and our job is to meet them where they’re at,” Standage said.
She’s expressed a desire to reduce stigma around drug use, especially for marginalized communities, by getting more people who might shy away from the topic altogether to start carrying opioid overdose-reversing naloxone, the generic version of Narcan.
“Intricate Minds’ main location is in the zip code that experiences the most overdose deaths in Springfield, so we are right where we need to be and just trying to expand so that we can provide more access and more education to everyone. Even people who don’t use drugs need that education,” she said. “A lot of people go, ‘Oh, I don’t know anybody that uses drugs so I don’t need Narcan.’ Well, what if you walk into a Qik-n-Ez bathroom and you encounter somebody that’s unresponsive? You can save their life.”
Jennifer Carroll, an associate professor of anthropology at North Carolina State University who researches substance use and various impacts of drug policy, told Illinois Times last year, “We have a total of five evidence-based, well-established, tried-and-true, known overdose prevention strategies.” Those strategies include:
- Availability of “naloxone for reversing overdoses”
- Accessibility to “medication for opioid-use disorder”
- “Syringe service programs for access to all those things – and then it turns out just being in a destigmatizing environment enables people to make all kinds of healthier choices all around”
- Prevalence of “drug-checking programs, which is also prevention and it helps people essentially know what’s in their supply”
- “Overdose prevention sites, because that’s a combination of all of those things and it’s a stigma-free environment, so people can be open about what’s happening.”
