Canada's Opioid Crisis: Do You Care?

[whatnext]

There is something to that - dealers are killing their best customers.

I have to admit my first reaction to this was dismay that almost 1,000 people died overdosing last year. Then I started reading about how First Responders were burning out and being overtaxed by responding to so many OD's. Often they'd revive a person one week, only to have them OD again the next. And then I started getting angry that resources were being consumed by those who weren't learning from it, and that productive members of society could die if for example they waited for an ambulance after a heart attack because some guy OD'ed for the third time. Maybe that's selfish.

[wave46]

Originally Posted by whatnext

There is something to that - dealers are killing their best customers.

I have to admit my first reaction to this was dismay that almost 1,000 people died overdosing last year. Then I started reading about how First Responders were burning out and being overtaxed by responding to so many OD's. Often they'd revive a person one week, only to have them OD again the next. And then I started getting angry that resources were being consumed by those who weren't learning from it, and that productive members of society could die if for example they waited for an ambulance after a heart attack because some guy OD'ed for the third time. Maybe that's selfish.

The eternal question of healthcare - how much resources do you devote to people intent on causing themselves harm? There's no clear answer, so the only real course of action is treat addicts just like everyone else and hope they have a moment of clarity. Some addicts do break out of addiction, so to condemn them because of their abuse problem seems callous.

[whatnext]

Surprised nobody commented on this...Canadian's life expectancy has stopped rising because of the opioid crisis:

Canadian life expectancy at birth has stopped rising for the first time in over four decades — something Statistics Canada attributes to the ongoing opioid crisis.

A report released by the agency on Thursday showed that, on average, women in Canada can expect to live 84 years and men 79.9 years.

That number was unchanged between 2016 and 2017. Every year from the mid-1990s to 2012, life expectancy rose by 0.2 years. Growth slowed after 2012 to 0.1 years every year and now seems to have stopped.
In some provinces, like Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan, life expectancy continues to increase. However, this is offset by a falling life expectancy in British Columbia — where the figure dropped by 0.3 years for men between 2016 and 2017....

https://globalnews.ca/news/5333946/l...opioid-crisis/

[Loco101]

On CBC The National news for today:

Here is something from where I live, Timmins ON and how my city is handling the opioid crisis as the city is one of the worst in Canada in terms of the number of addicts and deaths per capita. We also have one of the highest rates of homeless people.

Health care workers, agencies and police are using a different approach. Definitely worth watching if you have any interest in the subject.

At the beginning of the story, Dr Marion-Bellemare is driving only a block from where I live! I have had her for medical appointments when my family physician was on leave and she is a truly wonderful and caring person who
treats everybody with respect and kindness. I don't know Dr Samson but friends and family have only said great things about her. The comments from Dr Loreto were quite interesting about how the changes changed the way he saw people with addictions and how to treat them. All of the doctors are originally from Timmins as far as I know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5r67eNoQIE

[biguc]

Interesting resurrection.

Is it still even accurate to call this an opioid crisis? That fits with the typical American-narrativisation of everything Canadian, and Canada has its opioid problems. But many of the ODs I've heard about lately have been people doing other drugs, like coke, that for reasons I'll never understand someone's cut with fentanyl. That has nothing to do with the American problem of people addicted to over-prescribed oxies turning to black market opioids.

Whatever the case, get rid of the damn fentanyl.

[Bcasey25raptor]

What do you expect us to do exactly?

I care sure, but I can't do anything, and I have no idea where to even start on this issue.

[harls]

Originally Posted by biguc

Interesting resurrection.

Is it still even accurate to call this an opioid crisis? That fits with the typical American-narrativisation of everything Canadian, and Canada has its opioid problems. But many of the ODs I've heard about lately have been people doing other drugs, like coke, that for reasons I'll never understand someone's cut with fentanyl. That has nothing to do with the American problem of people addicted to over-prescribed oxies turning to black market opioids.

Whatever the case, get rid of the damn fentanyl.

https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_har...ng?language=en

[acottawa]

I remember watching that video years ago.

It was interesting, but it doesn't really explain why people choose hard drugs as a response to disconnection (as opposed to soft drugs, alcohol, food, gaming, etc.) or why so many people who are well-connected to society end up as addicts.

[biguc]

That is a good video. I'd read about rat park and the situation with Vietnam vets, but it's good to see it all put together. It's a pretty damning case against individualistic and isolating societies.

It's also pretty interesting to contrast it to Boroughs and his metabolic theory of addiction. At first glance, Boroughs wasn't a rat in a cage--he had trust-fund money, travelled the world, and had an enviable career. But he was also a closeted gay in a deeply homophobic era; he ended up shooting his wife in the head. Cages don't have to be all-encompassing to be isolating.

Hard drugs aren't that hard to get. And they get easier to get the harder everything else gets to get--when you can't afford to game your life away and the LC makes booze unaffordable, the dude who crawls the SRO selling hard starts looking like a friend. And there's also individual psychology; some people love winning, some people hold on to whatever they've got, some just get depressed.



Anyway, my point about fentanyl doesn't even have to do with addicts. There are a lot of weekend-warrior cokeheads ODing on laced blow these days. They don't need connection to society, just clean product.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by biguc

They don't need connection to society, just clean product.

It's incredibly difficult to ensure that, when said product is illegal. The number of people dying from drinking "bad" alcohol was a lot higher during the prohibition era than nowadays...

My current gf is (we can kinda say "used to be" at this point) an opioid addict and user, and I also found out the stuff is sold in some of my SROs (not just by a wandering dealer, but a tenant one). My experience with all of it tells me that where we're lacking (at least here in Quebec) is on the legal prescription front, the opioid clinics are limited and not very well equipped, you have to jump through hoops and for addicts, it's not easy. My gf only succeeded because she had me to navigate the system, and I cannot possibly hope to do this for all the other ones. Even in her case, several times the clinic and/or pharmacist failed us and she had to fall back on fentanyl, because of strictly bureaucratic and artificial reasons.

[AuxTown]

I'm glad to hear that your gf got the help she needed. As someone who treats addicts regularly in the community and hospital I am very discouraged. There honestly doesn't seem to be anything that consistently works to get people healthy and off this stuff. Of course we need to keep trying but my personal opinion is that our best bet is to tackle things from much more of a systemic perspective. Tackle some of the things that lead to drug addiction in the first place including homelessness, poverty, lack of support for mental health, and all forms of abuse to young people. In the meantime, though, we need to ensure addicts have clean needles and clean drugs. I wish there were another way but it seems to be the better of two evils.

Let's just hope we don't go the Krokodil route

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