Episode 6: Tiffany Vaughan Remembers Her Brother Cory

Jenna Keeble 00:00

Unsilencing Stories is a podcast that reflects the voices of people in small towns and communities in Canada, who have lost loved ones to the toxic drug supply crisis. Since 2016. More than 30,000 people have died from fatal overdoses in Canada and that number continues to climb. The risk in smaller towns and communities is much higher than urban areas because of a lack of harm reduction services, and stigma against substance use and people who use drugs. This podcast is part of a community based participatory research project facilitated by Aaron Goodman, Ph.D., a faculty member at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, B.C., along with students, Jenna Keeble and Ashley Pocrnich.

The aim was to assist collaborators in publicly memorializing their loved ones and expressing grief as well as challenging silences imposed by dominant media organizations and stigma from society against substance use and people who use drugs. We hope these nuanced stories make a clear why the government needs to be doing more to prevent further deaths. In this episode, you'll hear Taija McLuckie interviewing Tiffany Vaughn about her brother Cory, who experienced a fatal overdose in October 2021 in Medicine Hat, Alberta, at age 48.

Taija 01:09

Are you comfortable sharing your first and last name?

Tiffany 01:14

Yes. Yes, I am. Hi, my name is Tiffany Vaughn and I live in Turner Valley, Alberta and I lost my brother Cory to a fentanyl drug overdose.

Taija 01:32

How long ago? Was it that you lost your brother?

Tiffany 01:35

He passed away on October 27, 2021.

Taija 01:39

Where was he living during that time? And how old was he?

Tiffany 01:43

My brother was living in Medicine Hat, Alberta and he passed away when he was 48 years old.

Taija 01:52

How old are you compared to the age of your brother?

Tiffany 01:56

I am 18 months younger than my brother and we are very, very close and before he passed as well. 

Taija 02:09

My kids are 18 months apart and so that is a love to hate and hate to love each other age gap, I think.

Tiffany 02:19

Oh, is it. We got along but we fought.

Taija 02:24

Do you have like a favorite memory that you would like to share? Something that comes to your mind.

Tiffany 02:32 

Yeah, I do. Actually, it's a favorite memory, but a sad memory but one that I will never ever, ever forget. It had it happened in the summer of last year. There will be tears when I say this one. Last year in July, he, my brother, was taking fentanyl and he was overdosing. I live three and a half hours away from my family. My mom and dad also live in Medicine Hat and my mom had gone over to my brother's apartment to have coffee with him and he was overdosing. She called me in, and I said, “Take him to emergency right away so they can give him some naloxone”. I got in my vehicle right away and I made my way down there. She had sent me a video of him, and he didn't look good and so I knew that it was very serious. I drove down there, and he was an emergency for a while. The Naloxone worked, but they said it only lasts for a little while so, make sure you keep your eye on him and make sure he stays with you guys. We took him back to my parents’ house and we watched him. 

Medicine Hat had been experiencing a severe drought last summer and it hadn't rained in a long time. But we were sitting out on my parent's front porch area. My mom and dad and I and my brother and it started pouring rain, pouring rain like it hadn't in a long time. My brother got up and he walked down the driveway and he said, "Tiff, let's go dance. Let's go dance in the rain". And like when we were kids, and I had just dislocated my knee. One week prior to that where I literally couldn't hardly walk. I had a big knee brace on. It was a very bad injury. And so, I was like, “I can't go”, and he went out into the middle of the street and was dancing in the rain, and I couldn't get up, but I heard something say, “Go dance with your brother, go and dance with your brother". So, I hobbled my way out to the street, and I danced in the rain with my brother and my mom got it on video. 

Then we walked across the street, they live across the street from a school. We went and laid down on the grass and held hands and told each other how much we loved each other and that he would get through this. I had my phone and I got it on video as well. He made a joke that he hoped my camera was waterproof because it was raining so hard on us. My mom got those pictures as well of us laying on the grass together. Then when we got up, all of the neighbors on their street had come out and they were all dancing in the rain. It was so unbelievable. It was so cool because it hadn't rained in so long. It was like we invited everybody out to enjoy that moment with us. That is something I'll never forget for the rest of my life and two months later, he died.

Taija 06:02

Oh, that like, hit me. I like I felt that really hard. You were saying like just how close you guys were in age. What was it like growing up with your brother?

Tiffany 06:15

So amazing. After he passed away, I went through 20,000 photos. I know it was 20,000 because I helped my mom and dad put all their photos on the computer. I was going through all of these photos to make his memorial video. As I was going through it, I was just like man we had fun when we were little, we did so much stuff together like we skated together on the outdoor rink all the time, my grandparents lived across the street from a school with one of those old fire escapes with a big slide and you weren't supposed to go on it, but we did every single day. We played hide and seek in the neighborhood all the time. Like there was just so many really good memories with my brother. We just were really, really close, and then when my sister was born, she was six years younger than me. It was like she was our little doll and we just adored her and yeah, lots of good memories with my brother for sure.

Taija 07:23

What did your brother love to do?

Tiffany 07:25

My brother loved hockey, loved hockey. Yeah, he and he was so so good. Like so good. I would go, and I call myself a rink rat because literally we were at the rink all the time with my brother. There were times where I was ticked that I had to be up at six in the morning because my brother had to play hockey, but then when we got to the rink, I would get hot chocolate and then I would be fine. I would cheer on my brother, and he was so good. He was like a high scorer all the time. We had WHL scouts coming to our farm when we lived in Saskatchewan to talk to my parents about potentially trying out for WHL teams. He was a very, very good hockey player.

Taija 08:11

How old was he when he stopped playing hockey?

Tiffany 08:14

He was in grade eight and that's when he first started getting into experimenting with drugs. He had a very addictive personality. It didn't take long, and he was hooked. That is when the crime started as well for my brother. Pretty much from the time he was 13 years old, he was in and out of rehab facilities or remand facilities, jail. My brother spent two times in federal penitentiary in Alberta. That was really hard. I was always there visiting him. It's really hard going into a federal pen, going through all little security checks to go and see a loved one. It's very, very difficult to do that. But once he got out, there was a really long stretch of time where he was doing really, really well, really well. 

He met somebody and who had a two-year-old child already and then they ended up having twins. He was the dad of three beautiful kids. He was doing really well. He was doing really well. But drugs are so difficult to stop using. He got back into them and because of the extensive amount of time my brother spent in a federal penitentiary, he developed or didn't develop, I should say how to deal with money and how to deal with finances and how to deal with responsibilities. The barter system is what you use in jail, but you don't use it out in the real world. He never, never could grasp the concept of money and how that works and how priorities. That was a very large stressor for my brother is how to deal with that.

Taija 10:20

That was going to be a question that you kind of already started to answer was, how do you think the response to his substance use impacted him? You were saying how he didn't come out with the tools that were necessary for someone who had been using, you know, such mind-altering substances. They were a child on a like a developing brain.

Tiffany 10:44

He didn't develop any of the skills required, not only just from using the drugs when he was a teenager and that developing brain, but then also then going into a federal penitentiary and not learning the tools for when he got out. He didn't learn those skill set either. When you're in a in a jail setting, you're just bartering. That's all you're doing. You're trading something for cigarettes, you're trading this for that, and not really understanding the importance of the work that's required to get that money. Then when you get it what your priorities are.

Taija 11:22

Yeah, it his health issue was well treated like a health issue.

Tiffany 11:26

When you come out of a jail, and you don't know how to deal with money, because everything is money in life to live, you have to know how to deal with money. He didn't know how and so selling drugs, dealing with drugs isn't easy. Fall back because that's all I knew. You go to what you know, we all tried. We all tried our whole family tried. I'm an accountant. So, I tried to do like his budgeting. I tried to help him. It's very hard when it's your family, though. But he went to different facilities to try and help with that. What I will say about my brother is he was a really hard worker, he worked so hard for the money that he did make, he just didn't know what to do with it. 

In the last couple of years, he was struggling like everybody, COVID world with making money and paying bills. And figuring all that out. My brother worked in the oil and gas industry as a trucker for quite some time. But in the last couple of years of his life, he was driving cab in Medicine Hat so that he could be home more for his kids. There was somebody that got in his cab one day, that changed everything. It was somebody that just said the right words on the right day, at the right time to my brother about how much money he could make dealing drugs. That was it, that was it. My brother was so desperate for money just to pay for rent and stay in his apartment and not lose the home that he had for his kids that he started dealing with fentanyl. Then he started using, obviously, fentanyl. And it went, it was a very quick, quick progression after that, because it was uncapped, like he was he was dealing with the big guys.

Taija 13:29

You were saying that you know when he got out of jail that he was doing really well for like quite some time. I'm curious to know what you think helped him do really well, at that time.

Tiffany 13:43

He went on the methadone program for quite some time and that was working. But methadone you have to go every day and or at that time anyway, I don't know what it is like now but every day. That's really hard when you are working in the oil and gas industry and driving trucks and not know where you're going to be, what area of the province you're going to be. And so, it was very limiting for him. He got to the point where he was able to do carries, and that was working for a bit. Then he moved to the suboxone program and that was also working for quite some time. 

Taija 14:23

Why did he switch? 
 

Tiffany 14:24

I don't actually know why that switched. That switch happened to be honest. Something that I've actually wanted to ask my mom and dad, if they know, my mom would definitely know, anytime it's a pill format, or something that can be shared. My brother shared. My brother started selling Suboxone and he had a girlfriend that needed it. And so, they split it and anytime you split your dose, you're not getting the required amounts to help your brain fill those pockets. Right. So as soon as that started happening, that's when the cravings and the urge came back full force. He needed something to fill that void. 

And he knew, I knew that it wouldn't be long. We had many conversations in the last year of his life, him, and I just him and I, about him wanting to go, that he was trying to overdose. He knew based on the amount of fentanyl that he was taking, that he should have been, he should have died millions of times. And this suboxone was definitely helping curb that. Not letting it happen, until it did. We believe it was actually during a deal that he was dealing to somebody, and the person wanted him to try it as well. He had already had some. It was just too much for his system, at that time.

Taija 16:00

When he was doing really well, did he ever share with you what his goals were? Or, you know, things that he had planned? Where he wanted to do with his life?

Tiffany 16:12

No, because I think he always knew that he wouldn't be here, because he told me, he told my mom, that's what he desperately wanted to be here for his kids. And for us, he really did. Obviously, you don't want to leave your kids and your family. But he didn't want to be here anymore. That was very, very obvious.

Taija 16:33

Sounds like he had that experience of you know, he kind of knew where it was going to go. I imagine that being a very scary thing.

Tiffany 16:41

He was scared, but he was peaceful. If that makes any sense. I saw the peace in his and his demeanor, especially in the last year when we talked about it. You could tell that he had made, he had come to terms with it, that this was his life, or would be how he died. I don't know how else to explain it. But he just knew that he wouldn't. He told me many times, “I'm not going to live to 50, I know I’m not”. And we always just kept saying, "Yes, you are", you know, "We'll work through this". But I could tell he, when I was laying on that grass, holding his hand, I knew that it was going to happen very soon. And Three days before he died, I told my dad, “You're running out of time to tell your son that you love him because he's not going to be here much longer” and he died three days later. I know, he's in a better place for him. I know he's okay now and I know he's happy. And I... but I just missed him. Yeah. Just talking.

Taija 17:51

I've heard it is a story about, you know, a child with so much opportunity ahead of them with talent, and a family that loved him. Someone who opened their heart to another child had some of his own. But in a world where the system fails people, and I'm so sorry, I'm sorry that the alternative that he had in his mind was to not be here anymore. I believe he believed that it sounds like that's what he was met with, from the start of what his options were. So sorry.

Tiffany 18:35

All the tragedy like this. Good things do come. I know he's working with me to do some of the work that I'm doing. Because I had started a podcast two years ago, called Heart Beautiful Journey and it was to talk about my own heart beautiful journey. But over the last four seasons and now with him passing, I'm focusing my podcast pillars on mental health and trauma and addictions. And people that experience that and families that are left with it as well. And the grief that goes with that. I know what I'm doing is helping people as well. I have that experience now to talk about it firsthand and I know what they're going through. There is some good coming out of it and I'm just grateful that I know he's with me.

Jenna Keeble 19:34

That brings us to the end of this episode of the Unsilencing Stories podcast. To listen to more interviews in the series, please go to www.unsilencingstories.com, and if you'd like to share your thoughts on the episode, message us at unsilencingstories@gmail.com. Thank you so much for listening and please share the project with other people you know.