Everything Beverly Chillz does feels like a celebration. The artist puts his heart into his musical performances, and every party or event he stages is treated with the same care you’d assign to a milestone birthday. Many know him as the carefree face of the party. But what some might not know is that Chillz struggled with a methamphetamine addiction behind the scenes.
“I would leave from shows and literally have the pipe in my car and then just be gone for three weeks and go missing,” he says. “It was really hard to hide from the people who knew me, but I think to be open about it was kind of a cry for help. But then it was to hold myself accountable.”
The first time Chillz remembers trying meth was in 2012, at a bathhouse in Los Angeles. He says that using never failed to “burn the vibe” and bring negative effects to his performance and creativity. As time went on, fatigue from his lifestyle started to weigh on him.
“I got really, really tired and there was a point when my purpose was radiating out of me, my talent and my skills and everything I had done in life, it was coming to a peak at the same time [as] my usage,” he says. “It was this dichotomy of two wildly different lives. Like, I’m hella winning out here, and I’m popping, but I’m completely out of control of my body, of everything.”
Since getting clean, Chillz has become more vocal about addiction and the ways the community can deal with it. At local nonprofit recovery organization Foundation for Recovery, he received peer support and overdose prevention training using naloxone, an FDA-approved opioid overdose reversal medication also known as Narcan. He’s also started to make that medication readily available at all his music and arts events in partnership with organizations like Pact Coalition, Trac-B Exchange and the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD).
“I’ve spent time with these people and been around these people within the community’shealthcare sector on a personal level,” he says. “So it’s dope to bring that into the room and into an event where it’s like, hey, this really is a celebration.”
Chillz isn’t alone in this effort. In 2022, Insomniac founder Pasquale Rotella announced that End Overdose, a Los Angeles-based overdose prevention nonprofit, would have a permanent presence at the company’s festivals moving forward, including the Electric Daisy Carnival set to return to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in May.
Awareness of Narcan and harm reduction efforts are growing while fentanyl-related deaths rage on nationwide and in Clark County. According to the health district, the synthetic opioid is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.
Katarina Pulver, health educator for SNHD, says fentanyl is pervasive in most every street drug available.
“One of the biggest dangers is fentanyl being mixed with stimulants because one of the drugs of choice here in Clark County, or specifically Las Vegas, is methamphetamine, as a party city,” she says. “Many people are taking what they think is methamphetamine or cocaine to go out and have a good time, but it’s laced with fentanyl.”
Drug overdoses involving fentanyl have risen in Clark County since 2020, with 237 deaths reported by SNHD in 2023. Pulver also notes men have higher overdose rates than women.
The health district will soon introduce training
for xylazine or “tranq” test strips, too, as that potentially fatal drug starts to emerge in other cities.
Everyone who can should stock up on Narcan, Pulver says. It could mean the difference between life and death.
“We really advocate that naloxone should be part of every household, similar to what they would have with a fire extinguisher, because you’d be really hard-pressed these days to find a family who isn’t impacted in some way shape or form by the overdose crisis in America,” she says.
Dr. Farzad Kamyar, who specializes in psychiatry and addiction medicine at Roseman University, echoes that sentiment, encouraging parents to not tense up at the idea of their children knowing how to administer Narcan.
“If I’m a mom, I would want my kiddo to know how to do CPR, how to do the Heimlich [maneuver] and how to use an [automated external defibrillator]. But we live in the age of overdoses now and we can’t ignore it,” says Kamyar, who supervises Roseman’s Empowered program for pregnant and postpartum mothers who’ve used opioids. “My kids, they know how to use Narcan. We have Narcan in our house. We have Narcan in our car.
“My 13-year-old and my 8-year-old, they’re not using opioids. But my 13-year-old goes to middle school, and there have been kids in middle school who have died from overdose.”
Sean O’Donnell, executive director of Foundation for Recovery, joined the organization after losing his boyfriend to overdose and going into detox treatment at 17 years old. Those experiences have shaped his approach to those in recovery, giving him an insider’s perspective into addiction.
“There’s just so much shame. I think that’s probably one of the No. 1 contributors of what prevents people from getting help,” he says. “When they think of an alcoholic, they have this vision in their heads of what that is. And it’s like, well, I don’t know if I want to say out loud that that’s me right now.”
Foundation for Recovery, which is staffed by recovery coaches who have experience with substance use, operates as a community recovery center in Las Vegas, offering Narcan and fentanyl test strips, job training, help with housing and general information about Narcan.
Due to Nevada’s Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act, a person can administer Narcan to someone who has overdosed and call 911 without fear of legal prosecution, O’Donnell says—the one exception being if the person who has overdosed has previous warrants or they’re in possession of a large amount of illegal substances.
“You have this limited amount of time where you should administer naloxone, and then make sure [emergency medical service] is on their way to help stabilize,” O’Donnell says. “I’ve met parents who have lost their kids because folks that they were using with took time to instead hide their drugs before calling 911.”
One of the biggest barriers to treatment is stigma, Kamyar says. It comes from clinicians; it comes from families; and it can even come from ourselves.
To combat that, Kamyar approaches his patients’ substance use like any other disorder and with “person-first” language. Instead of saying “relapse,” he calls it “return to use.” Those little things make a difference, along with having Narcan as readily available as you would a defibrillator in the case of a cardiac arrest. Narcan’s nasal spray is even easier to use.
With large festivals like EDC getting more vocal about overdose prevention, Kamyar sees a current opportunity for Las Vegas to set a new standard.
“We talk about legalizing marijuana. They’re going to open up lounges, all these kinds of things. So we’re sort of inching towards destigmatizing the use of substances,” Kamyar says. “But I do think that there’s a lot of opportunity for us to be a model that the rest of the nation would [say], look at Vegas. They’re prepared for overdoses.”
The FDA approved naloxone nasal spray for over-the-counter sale without a prescription, but the emergency treatment could cost around $50 at your local Walgreens. Free Narcan, which people can obtain from SNHD vending machines around town, eliminates the cost barrier, and that’s what Chillz and groups like Foundation for Recovery have aimed to do.
“You’re certainly not alone. There’s help out there, and there’s resources out there. More importantly, there’s free help and resources if you need it,” says O’Donnell. “Let’s stop living in shame and let’s be out loud about our recovery status and supporting people.”
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