Overdose Crisis – The Supportive Community

Overdose Crisis - Social Emergency

Written by and for people with Lived Experience - Port Alberni Community Action Team - Families Helping Families

Today’s Learning Moment – 12 14 20 Issue: Overdose Crisis – The Supportive Community

Your best reading experience is online with photos and formatting here: https://ptalbcat.blogspot.com/2020/12/overdose-crisis-supportive-community.html or the text version below.

I have been fortunate enough in my life so far to never have experienced someone in my family or immediate circle of friends die from a drug overdose. Working as a paramedic across the province, I have had to deal with my share of drug overdoses and experience the turmoil and trauma of these events. All too often, the crisis seems to be glazed over by the media or by professionals as the mental health and drug overdose crisis, but the reality of the tragedy that this crisis creates is incomprehensible. It doesn’t just impact the lives of those dependent on a poisoned drug supply, but the families, friends, social support staff, advocates, and the medical & first responder communities. The problem impacts us all whether we know it or not.

The analogy of dropping a pebble into a still pond comes to mind. With ripples of water that move in concentric circles outwards. The inner circle of rings: the families, close friends are most impacted. As you move outward: medical staff, first responders, advocates, social workers. It would be unfathomable to think of all these pebbles landing in a pond with rings overlapping each other and moving outward. This rippling pond is the overdose crisis.

 I have worked with a team of dedicated, passionate community responders, families, and people who use drugs, to try and look for solutions to some of these issues for the past 2 years. The work has broadened my understanding to the scale of this crisis beyond the emergency paramedic response to be inclusive of many ripples to this stone hitting the water. I will say, that I have learned the greatest lessons from those closest circles that ripple out from each person with substance illness. We often define those individuals as those with lived or living experience, also referred to as peers and the families of those with lived and living experience. This group knows more about this crisis than anyone.  

As a paramedic, you deal with the call you’re on. You can only focus your undivided attention on one situation at a time. After working for several years, you get a pretty in-depth look at a variety of calls and situations. You get an insider understanding of some of the struggles, living arrangements, and conflict some of our populations are faced with. The more calls you’re on and the more experience you collect, you begin to see ‘stereotyping’ as not simply problematic, but as an error in thinking that is creating barriers for these disadvantaged populations.

A day in the life of a paramedic can look anything like this: The call for the employed middle-aged man using drugs alone because his addiction is a secret from his family. The group of college students who thought they were taking MDMA and one of them has overdosed. The young mom who became addicted to T-3’s after postpartum depression. The seasonal worker, now unemployed, who ran out of his benefits package and can no longer maintain his dose of safe pain killers, now using street drug supply. The marginalized, homeless, and seemingly overly ‘complicated’ mental health patient who is dependent on several substances. The list goes on. This side of town, that side of the city, outside, inside, young, old.  This has become the norm for a day in the life as a paramedic.

In my more recent role, as a community response coordinator to the overdose crisis, it is not uncommon for me to hear the question; how does strong social supports play a role in the overdose crisis? I think that question is a big one. So, let’s go over it together -

Some people still have problems accepting the foundation that these diseases are disabilities. Mental illness and drug dependency are defined as a disability under the BC Humans Rights Code. A disability that you cannot discriminate against. A disability that you cannot punish a person. A disability that you cannot avoid or look away from and it will magically go away. This is a medical health problem. This is a chronic relapsing medical health problem. This means things can seem to be going well in someone’s care with this illness one moment, and in an instant, go backwards. That this takes constant work, mostly by those struggling with the mental and drug dependency issues but by all those close to them or providing health care.

We need to trust our medical health professionals, our Provincial Health Officer, our Regional Health Officers, and Addictions Specialists. This is not a moral issue, lack of will power or dilemma of philosophy. This is a medical health issue, now a crisis. So once again, mental illness, drug dependency is defined as a disability under Human Rights law in BC. (Please see the link to the government of BC website for further information):

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/law-crime-and-justice/human-rights/human-rights-protection/disability.pdf

The community will need to understand that we are not going to solve this issue overnight and that part of this illness is to understand that those struggling with this illness will have moments where they relapse. The community needs to trust and rely on the judgment of those who understand this world. The medical health professionals, the families, and those that have gone before and recovered from a life of drug dependency. The experts.

Sometimes in my work as a paramedic, I have the opportunity to ask patients the questions I have been asked by the general public as a community advocate and group coordinator:

-          “So, you have no place to sleep tonight, you’re hungry … do you think that this will cause you to want to use drugs or continue to use more drugs?” Overwhelmingly the question is laughed at and followed with: “Of course, why wouldn’t it?”

-          “You want to start leading a healthy life. You want to get sober and start the long hard work towards recovery?” “Yes.” “You have to wait 2 weeks to hear back from someone. Will you still be here in 2 weeks and not using drugs at that time and wish to continue towards rehabilitation and the recovery process after 2 weeks of being clean all on your own?” You can imagine how that conversation would go.

You get my point.

A suitable community response needs to match the severity of the situation. An understanding that, above all, we need a strong foundation if we are going to build anything that resembles recovery. That understanding, following and ensuring basic human rights and dignity for all is what it means to be Canadian. Don’t get me wrong, the majority of the work will need to be done by the group of individuals themselves if they wish to recover and lead a healthier life. We need to continue to work on all social supports so that we can continue to insert the right responses, trained professionals, support groups, and family to the right areas at the right time. A supportive, knowledgeable community means that with one mishap or relapse from an individual doesn’t mean we outcast them and lose all of the hard work we have all done to help them. That as an informed, dedicated community led by our experts we are socially stable enough to understand the need to act quickly to ensure we protect the good changes that have happened in someone’s path to recovery. That we continue to support the families and ensuring they don’t lose hope. That we continue to take on the responsibilities so that those rings closest to the pebble hitting the water don’t feel like they are the only ones who care. 

Working in this community response for the last couple of years has taught me, that we are going to all need each other if we are going to make this work. Families supporting families, peers supporting peers, and the entire community will have to become better informed and make necessary changes to improve our collective response.

Author: Mark Lacroix
Paramedic – Advocate

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Families Helping Families is an initiative of the Port Alberni Community Action Team. We send out “Learning Moment” articles regularly to help folks understand substance illness. Knowledge is vital in understanding the illness of our family members. You may copy, distribute or share our articles as long as you retain the attribution. You can be added to our distribution list by dropping us a note to - albernihelp@gmail.com