Voices of the toxic drug crisis

I immigrated to Canada after university in the mid 2000s. It’s a stage of life where you make quite a few friends, but you don’t have the extended social networks you acquire in the place that you grow up and went to school. 

Over the past 15 years, from my non-work life I have lost six people to the toxic drug crisis…that’s six people who aren’t coming over for dinner anymore, that we don’t get to reminisce over their wedding pictures, I don’t get to see the sort of parent that they could have been, their kids struggling to remember dad.  

In B.C., these stories are repeated on average of five times a day, every day, for the past seven years. As I walk my dog around my neighbourhood, I often wonder about the people we pass, people who have lived here longer than me…how many family members, friends, neighbours, coworkers have they lost? How many more of them do we need to lose before we decide enough is enough, and take the steps that have always been available to us to stop these preventable deaths?

Working in Mental Health and Substance Use services through the heart of the toxic drug crisis has been taxing on my soul. Watching people who use substances and their families and friends suffer the effects of these insidious drugs has left me with a hopeless feeling.

The cycle of addiction is powerful and all encompassing. The grip drugs has on a person is devastating, and being that the drug supply is toxic, leading to deaths of people who may have walked the path of recovery, it’s a hard pill to swallow. Society forgets that these people are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, neighbours and friends.

Trying to shift the narrative and the stigma surrounding people who use substances has been a slow process. However, there is hope! With kindness and compassion towards people who use substances we can move towards a brighter future for all. One day at a time.

I have been working in community for almost a year now. I have been so unbelievably touched by the lives of my clients; their stories, their past traumas, their incredible resiliency, and ability to keep going every day. Working as an overdose response nurse in community, I became well versed in the dirty drugs out there; overdose response has changed dramatically due to benzodiazepines, xylazine and high-grade fentanyl. 

Between the horrible cold snap this winter and the toxic drug crisis we lost some amazing humans. Young people barely in adulthood, parents of young children, elders who didn’t even have a chance to get housing before they passed, even our peer workers. It happened in staggering numbers and shook us all to the core. I will continue to advocate for my amazing clients, to instill hope and work towards a brighter future while fighting to eliminate the toxic drug supply. 

I am an RN working in the area of Mental Health & Substance Use in Kelowna and have chosen to help fight on the front lines to save lives from the dreaded toxic drug crisis. Over the last several years I have worked in overdose prevention at the supervised consumption site and at present time work in the area of prescribed safer supply which is an extension of the Opiate Agonist Treatment (OAT) services. In my role as a nurse, I assume a harm reduction approach that helps my clients stay safer while using substances. I meet my clients where they are at and work alongside them as they travel along their individual health and wellness journeys without shame or judgement.

Over the past seven years, and even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic, I have witnessed that the street drug supply has become increasingly toxic, contaminated and less predictable. This has made the harm reduction work that I do more difficult and the lives of my clients more uncertain. In my nursing career I have responded to countless toxic drug overdoses. Typically my clients would need rescue breaths and/or Naloxone to reverse the effects of the toxic drugs. However now, the illicit supply is being cut with other agents that are not reversed with Naloxone. Recently at our drug checking services we are seeing drugs being cut with substances not recommended for human consumption such as Xylazine, an animal tranquiller used in veterinary medicine.

I have witnessed first hand how the illicit drug supply is becoming more volatile and dangerous and the devastating effects that it is having on my clients and the community as a whole. The drug supply evolves rapidly and there are new things are trending up all the time.

My clean date was May 22, 2020. I saved three people in a house fire on Duncan Avenue in Penticton. They put my face on the front page of the newspaper, calling me a local hero. I was like, wow, I looked at myself and I looked 100 years old. I was so embarrassed. When I got my Canadian Silver Medal of Bravery I wanted to be clean and be a completely different person when I received my medal.

So I detoxed myself for 27 days. I walked into Pathways and said ‘Mike, I need help. It’s time.’ I was entrenched in my addiction, homeless, couch surfed for 17 years. I went to a men’s recovery house called Discovery House in Penticton. I spent three months there. I liked it so much I signed up for another three months. Then I moved into a stage three house.  

I spent a total of 714 days in treatment to make sure I got it this time. This place saved my life. I volunteered almost every day at Discovery House. All the spare time I had. I gave back, and helped the guys out. They eventually hired me as a mentor and a wellness coordinator.

Since I’ve gotten clean, I’ve gotten 18 certificates, got my family back. I bought a car and got my driver’s licence. I have a beautiful place on Main St. and so much more because I quit doing drugs. Today I’m a productive member of my society and I got my life back. I give back six to seven days a week helping people struggling with addictions.

I started doing peer work with Interior Health just over two years ago. Back then there were three of us. I work with the Mental Health and Substance Use (MHSU) team. I work the front lines, help with the drug testing program with Ask Wellness, make harm reduction kits, hand out supplies, support clients that are struggling, do Naloxone training, support eOPS (episodic-overdose prevention service) and support the MHSU team when they need me. I love working the front lines.

I joined all kinds of committees in Penticton, like the MHSU Framework Steering Committee at IH. I work with the team leads from Interior MHSU. I work with another girl from Kimberley, B.C. We both have lived experiences to bring to the team.

I also work for Penticton Overdose Prevention Society (P+OPS). I drive an outreach bus. We hand out clean supplies, food, coffee, hot chocolate, sleeping bags, tents, clothes, etc. The P+OPS team banded together and started the emergency winter shelter. I was the supervisor on my shifts.

Discovery House, IH and P+OPS I believe saved my life. It’s been great. I have lived experiences that I bring. I have a good connection with everyone. Working the front lines reminds me if I pick up, I’m going to lose everything I’ve worked hard for. I’ve some so far. I don’t know how I made it through all these years.

There’s a tension between experiencing the heaviness of vicarious trauma on a daily basis and an awareness that I will be leaving it behind every night to retreat to a loving spouse, healthy kids and a 3,000 square foot home. To some extent it feels indulgent to wallow in my own sadness when some of my patients struggle unimaginably, yet the work can be a grind, physically and emotionally, especially when there’s acrimony between colleagues who disagree on how to best address the problem.  

As a crisis smolders along unchecked, there’s a tendency to accommodate to the situation, for the shock to dwindle, for the sadness and misery to become almost mundane. We cannot let this crisis become a normalized, status quo. It’s not normal when your first instinct as a clinician is to check the obituaries when a patient unexpectedly misses an appointment. 

Serving as a nurse during this toxic drug crisis has been a special experience filled with heartache but not without hope and joy. My heart has been softened and I have been required to see the world through a different lens; that we are all just people looking for love, connection and relationship. I believe we are not designed to move through life alone and all need people. I have learned that I need to be willing to sit with someone in their struggle with no strings attached. This has blessed me with opportunities to be there for clients down the road in their times of need.  

I work alongside some of the best people who understand the importance of seeing people as people first. I have hope for a world where we can be honest about struggle and access necessary services without shame, stigma or labels. Let us continue to look forward and do the good work! 

Thank you!

I am the life skills worker (LSW) for the Toxic Drug Crisis, and I’m on the Substance Use Team. My role is a heavy outreach role, so it’s going out into community, assisting my clients, helping them find shelter, and focusing on their substance use.

I came from Housing originally and during the lockdown we saw a significant increase in overdoses due to the toxic drug supply, which has become significantly worse while I’ve been in this role. I’ve seen lots of members of the community who have used for a long time, and you never think anything bad is going to happen to them, have had bad things happen to them or have passed away. It’s really affected the community as a whole because you have these life-long, huge people in the community pass, and so many people are watching their friends pass away. It’s adding a lot of trauma. Not only is [substance use] a trauma-based coping mechanism, but now their coping mechanism is causing more trauma in their community.

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It’s important to bring to light that people who are being affected by this crisis aren’t just people that we see on the street, it’s people who are alone in their house. That’s the highest death rate right now - males who are using alone in their own home. It’s not just our vulnerable population, it’s people who are “invisible” using, on their own, and it’s really affecting them too.