To Davis Schneider, his older brother Steven was “form of like a Superman.”
“He worked as a nurse up until he died. He worked each day to assist people in need,” the Toronto Blue Jays player said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“He was form of like the massive popular guy who played a variety of sports and everybody form of loved him and I looked as much as him each day. Still do.”
But in November 2020, his brother died of an opioid overdose in a relative’s home in Recent Jersey, where Schneider is from.
Steven was 26 and alone in a room in the home.
“During COVID, everyone was form of coping with some stuff. It was just (an) abnormal time,” said Schneider.
“Mentally, he just wasn’t in a extremely great place. And I didn’t know that. He never really form of showed me he was form of struggling …. And, , he fell into some drug stuff,” he said.
Schneider didn’t find out about naloxone — the drug that may reverse opioid overdoses and save lives if administered in time.
“Probably essentially the most devastating thing is that he was alone, he wasn’t with anyone,” he said.
Schneider now thinks if someone had been together with his brother and had naloxone, his life might have been saved.
So when Emergent BioSolutions — the manufacturer of naloxone’s brand-name Narcan nasal spray — invited Schneider to grow to be a paid spokesperson to boost awareness, the 27-year-old accepted, hoping to forestall other people from dying.
Get weekly health news
Receive the most recent medical news and health information delivered to you each Sunday.
The corporate publicly announced the partnership on Wednesday.
Greater than 55,000 Canadians died within the opioid poisoning crisis between January 2016 and September 2025, in accordance with Public Health Agency of Canada data.
The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction says about 20 people die of opioid overdoses every single day within the country — and plenty of of those deaths might have been prevented by naloxone.
But regardless that naloxone kits can be found free of charge across the country, including in lots of pharmacies and health centres, much of most people doesn’t pick them up, health experts say.
“There is usually a denial about how near home opioid overdoses could be, and other people find themselves in scenarios or situations where they didn’t expect to be,” said Dr. Taryn Lloyd, an emergency department physician and addiction medicine specialist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
“There’s sometimes this concept that ‘it doesn’t occur to me or to the people around me.’ And we all know that’s not true. Unfortunately, opioid overdoses affect all people from all walks of life and all ages.”
When someone has an opioid overdose, they stop respiration and that’s what results in death, Lloyd said.
Naloxone reverses that effect, she said, noting that she sees many individuals dropped at the ER who wouldn’t have survived if someone they knew or a bystander hadn’t given them the drug.
Within the hospital, patients receive naloxone intravenously or through an intramuscular injection, Lloyd said.
Although intramuscular injectors can be found in the neighborhood, many individuals find the nasal spray less intimidating to make use of and it will possibly be just as effective, she said.
If someone is drowsy or unconscious and their respiration is irregular, that’s the time to offer naloxone if there’s a possibility it may very well be an opioid overdose, Lloyd said.
If the overdose is from a non-opioid drug, the naloxone won’t work but it surely also won’t do any harm, she said.
Lloyd, who shouldn’t be involved within the Emergent BioSolutions partnership with Schneider, said the baseball player’s story may help to scale back stigma — and he or she hopes people will pick up a naloxone kit because of this.
“I encourage people to have one of their automobile, have one of their backpack or bag that they use every single day simply to have available,” she said.
Schneider said he packs a naloxone kit when he goes on the road with the Jays.
But he also desires to see naloxone kits available “in every public place, like a fireplace extinguisher (or) first-aid kit.”
That might be ideal, said Tim Deloughery, a substance use health specialist on the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.
“The underside line is naloxone saves lives, but it surely only works if it’s available within the moment someone needs it,” he said.
“It acts fast. It’s forcing opioids to unbind from the receptors within the body.”
Schneider misses his brother every single day, remembering how he pushed him to be higher as he played through the “grind” of the minor leagues on his quest to make it to Major League Baseball.
He wishes Steven could meet his Jays teammates and that he’d been there for his or her thrilling playoff run that took all of them the technique to the World Series last 12 months.
“He would’ve loved it of course. He would have … been there each game and cheered me on and I feel like he would have loved the fellows as well.”
© 2026 The Canadian Press