The clients who schedule appointments with Sarah Borden at Ride or Dye , a hair salon off Sixth Street, often have some ties to the recovery world.
Whether it’s through their work as treatment providers or a more personal experience with substance abuse, Borden — who is nine years sober and active in the recovery community — has made her salon a sanctuary for those touched by or still facing addiction.
Those clients are part of the reason she reached out to the county about participating in a program to carry naloxone. The medication, sold under the brand name Narcan, can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
The other reason is advocating that her clients with no history of addiction also have the life-saving drug on hand.
“That’s who I like to distribute Narcan to because they believe they don’t need it, even though their neighbor’s son could be overdosing next door,” Borden said. “I believe anybody and everybody could save a life.”
Ride or Dye started carrying boxes of naloxone earlier this year through a partnership with the Salish Behavioral Health Organization. They are among the nearly dozen places in Kitsap now providing immediate access to doses of the medication. Others are expected to follow.
As overdoses have persisted, naloxone has become a cornerstone in the fight against the opioid crisis. Last year, a record 65 people died of overdoses in Kitsap County, according to preliminary data, marking the fifth consecutive year the death toll has increased.
The rate of suspected overdoses declined in the first quarter of 2024 for the first time in years, according to health district data. But it remains historically high.
Access to naloxone has expanded significantly over the past few years, after the Federal Food and Drug Administration approved its over-the-counter sale and made it free for those on Medicaid insurance.
Yet barriers to naloxone persist, health officials say. Lack of insurance or the stigma of admitting opioid use to a pharmacist can prevent people from getting it at their pharmacy. Some pharmacies may not even have it in stock.
There are also concerns about the immediacy of this method. When someone is overdosing, particularly in public, they need readily available naloxone not restricted by business hours or behind a counter. Health officials compare it to having an emergency defibrillation in public spaces.
State law now requires school districts with 2,000 or more students to have naloxone at each of their high schools. And locally, Salish BHO has placed a few dozen newspaper-box-style containers filled with free doses of naloxone across its service area of Kitsap, Clallam and Jefferson counties.
Ride or Dye was not permitted to have a box outside of its storefront. Borden instead keeps the boxes of Narcan behind her station. She offers them to people who visit her store, posts about them online and distributes it to other business owners.
“I have a lot of friends who are still in active addiction and I’ll send them on their way with Narcan,” she said. “I have taxi drivers, Uber drivers and other people that have random jobs in the community, whether they’re tattoo artists, bartenders they come in and are like, ‘I would like to have Narcan.’”
Unlike other organizations receiving naloxone from Salish — mostly government facilities, community centers or treatment providers — Ride or Dye is a commercial business. There has been a push nationally to get Narcan into more private spaces like bars, restaurants and music festivals. In Kitsap, Ride or Dye appears to be at the forefront.
But being an outlier is nothing new for Borden or her salon. Over its more than two years in operation, the shop has regularly bucked traditional business practices in favor of helping the community, particularly the most vulnerable.
Borden acknowledges that her shop is unique, but says they are reluctant to talk about that publicly. They rarely publicize the volunteer work they do, whether that’s providing free haircuts at the Salvation Army and Pendleton Place Apartments or opening up their store for unhoused people to use the restroom and sit down.
“I think we just genuinely do it,” she said. “This is the first time we are talking about it because it’s just what we do.”
Part of Borden’s tendency for compassion is informed by her past experience with substance abuse. Raised in Bremerton by parents who were addicts, she spent years selling drugs while struggling with addiction and homelessness. She ultimately ended up serving a three-year prison sentence.
After her release in 2018, Borden was sober and started working three jobs to get by. She eventually put herself through cosmetology school and landed a gig in town.
Although she never wanted to have her own shop, she was thrust into it. The salon she had been working suddenly shut down. Needing to provide for herself, she recruited a pair of her former co-workers and founded Ride or Dye a month later, throwing everything she had into it.
“I had $8,500 in my bank account and I had $50 by the time we opened,” she said. “My barber and I, we were ride-or-die partners. We wanted to stay together for this vision, for the community and to provide for our family. That’s where Ride or Dye came about.”
Since opening, Borden said her shop and another pair of businesses that share the parking lot at the corner of Rainier Avenue and Sixth Street – the youth-nonprofit God’s Broken Home University and the restaurant Island Hut — have become a common ground for people who need resources.
Borden points out that unlike most salons, she regularly lets homeless people or those in active addiction come inside, even if they are not there for a haircut. She’ll always offer them a place on the brown sofa in the center of her shop, and provide them with food, water and a place to use the restroom.
“We accept anyone and everyone. If they come in and they haven’t washed their hair in three months or they are in active addiction I’m getting my hands in there,” she said. “Because I’ve been there. I’ve been embarrassed for someone to touch me. To touch my hair. I want everyone to feel comfortable.”
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Hair salon offers sanctuary, naloxone for people touched by addiction
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