Since April 2016, there has been a public health emergency in place throughout BC due to the staggering number of people dying of toxic drug use.
Over 13,700 have died since then, with over 2,500 succumbing to the ongoing crisis just last year.
This figure can be hard to comprehend, and for many British Columbians who have lost a loved one, it can feel difficult to have any sort of personal impact on the public health emergency.
The BC government has been constantly pushing to implement better systems to reduce these deaths, but not all their initiatives end up having an effect that feels tangible to those who have been affected.
Aside from those government initiatives, there are organizations on Vancouver Island making a difference and offering resources to empower individuals who want to do the same.
AVI Health and Community Services (AVI) are a harm reduction organization that launched in the 80s as AIDS Vancouver Island to help combat the AIDS crisis.
Since then, they have continued their work and expanded their resources to aid Vancouver Island communities that are detrimentally impacted by the toxic drug supply situation.
In this endeavour, AVI also offers naloxone training which is a cornerstone of harm reduction and is readily available in Victoria and across Vancouver Island if you know where to look.
What is naloxone and why is it important?
Naloxone is an opioid antagonist which is administered via a syringe. It is a medication used to reverse or reduce the effects of opioids such as fentanyl, and is free at any pharmacy.
It is a useful tool against the toxic drug crisis, but first, one has to learn how to use it.
Dreanna Picard is local harm reduction worker who has been working in this field for many years.
In Victoria, she offers a free class approximately every month or so at MA Wellness and Yoga where people can learn everything they need to know about naloxone.
“MA is such a great community support,” Picard told Victoria Buzz.
“I met the owners and they were so interested in, like, how do they support the community, what can they do?”
The first naloxone training that Picard offered started as a one-off workshop that would be free to all who were interested in learning. From there, people kept requesting it, so Picard kept coming back.
Picard says because of her work in local harm reduction organizations, she now has more tools at her disposal through what she does for work.
When teaching people about how to administer naloxone and respond to an overdose, she puts emphasis on making sure a team can respond to get the person who experienced the overdose some help as well as the person who responded to the situation.
Picard says that in her professional lifetime, she has responded to well over 100, if not, 200 overdoses, and sadly has seen some people lose their lives to toxic drugs in that time.
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She went on to tell the story of the first time a person she knew and cared for died from a drug overdose.
“I myself am in recovery from drug addiction,” Picard explained.
“I was like 18-years-old and when getting sober, the fentanyl epidemic was increasing. I’ve been sober now for just over eight years and so it just started to be everyone I knew and all my friends [passing away].”
Picard got into a frontline mental health care job because of her past and met her best friend while doing this work. She and her friend lived together and did everything together.
This friend was struggling though, according to Picard. She had lost her boyfriend to a fatal overdose a year before the two had met and because of that, this friend had thrown herself into her work.
“She couldn’t process the ripple effect of his death,” Picard told Victoria Buzz.
On September 5th, 2019, Picard found her best friend dead from a fatal overdose.
“That shaped me a lot as a person and it took a lot from me,” she said. “But I look at that and those dots are so easily connectable.”
“Both of their parents on separate sides had had death from fatal overdose and then, both my best friend and her boyfriend died and I wonder what’s next.”
Picard says she felt she had to do something to remove herself from this.
“I don’t want my mom to find me, I have to do something and the only way I know how to do that is to keep talking about it and keep throwing the information out there and keep trying to, I don’t know exactly, do something because this is so much bigger than I am.”
Unfortunately, this is a story that may be all too familiar to those who have also lost someone to the toxic drug crisis.
What can be done to make a difference
Picard says the key to making a difference in the toxic drug crisis lies in small, simple acts of kindness.
Naloxone training and having a kit on your person are important and can come in handy if you come across someone experiencing an overdose, but mostly just showing compassion to people in everyday situations can mean the world to someone.
“I think we need to meet each other with a bit more kindness and a little less fear and stigma,” said Picard.
“If we think the people that are experiencing this fentanyl epidemic are the people who are unhoused and in the downtown communities isolated from society, they are experiencing that grief alone.”
“Maybe you just walk down the street and smile at somebody, maybe you just show a little bit of love and a little bit of kindness where we can,” she continued.
In addition to getting naloxone training from Picard, people can seek training from AVI on Vancouver Island or they can learn from an organization called Towards the Heart, who also offer online training.
Towards the Heart and AVI will also often come into businesses to offer this training to entire teams of staff, which can be important for areas where toxic drug overdoses happen more frequently.
