Caitlin Burritt  00:01 

Thank you for listening to the Unsilencing Stories Podcast. We are in the midst of a public health crisis. More than 32,000 people in Canada have died from fatal opioid overdoses since 2016 according to Health Canada. Previously, this podcast featured interviews with bereaved people in smaller towns and communities in BC and Alberta who have lost loved ones to fatal overdose. In this phase, we're sharing interviews with seven harm reduction workers, also known as peers, in different parts of BC.  

Caitlin Burritt  00:28 

The BC Centre for Disease Control Harm Reduction Services defines harm reduction as support services and strategies that aim to keep people safe and minimise death, disease and injury from high risk behaviour. Peers face a lot of challenges. This has been documented by many researchers including Zahra Mamdani and colleagues in BC. In their 2021 paper they outline significant challenges peers face including financial struggles, difficulty finding housing and stressors at work. We wanted to explore these themes with peers and find out more about their experiences and share this information with the public. So we conducted multiple remote interviews with harm reduction workers and invited them to talk about the stressors they face.  

Caitlin Burritt  01:08 

Please note this podcast contains information about substance use, overdose death, grief, trauma and stressors that peers face and this may be distressing to listen to. The podcast is part of a research project led by Aaron Goodman, PhD, faculty member at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC, and conducted under the auspices of a grant known as the Chancellor's Chair Award. I'm Caitlin Burritt, a researcher with the project. A number of researchers including Giorgia Ricciardi and Chloe Burritt, who happens to be my sister, and a number of students have played key roles in the study and you'll hear many of their voices in this podcast.  

Caitlin Burritt  01:41 

In this episode, you'll hear Lucas Akai and Esther Cheung interview Ben, a peer harm reduction worker in BC for the first time. Ben introduces himself and speaks about his past and present work in harm reduction, his role as primary caregiver for his paraplegic spouse, the stigma facing drug users, and the challenges he and his partner face in accessing medical care. 

Esther Cheung  02:01 

Tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you gave us a brief, a brief summary of what you do. But I don't know, maybe like a day in the life of what, of like, what your typical day is like, or? 

Ben  02:14 

Well, I have been doing outreach work since the mid-90s. And I started working in the rave scene, basically. So I have lost friends to overdoses since the late 80s, I guess. And, you know, the overdose crisis really started a long time before the current public health emergency was declared. It's just escalated severely in the last several years, but it's been a huge problem for a lot longer than that. So we just previously, we were working with the unit and as outreach workers briefly, but being in the role of people with living experience, there's still a lot of misgivings, shall we say, in the sort of bureaucracy around working with active drug users. And there was, just before COVID hit, we subsequently started working more with the local CAT team.  

Ben  03:21 

And I was the peer coordinator for the CAT team last year. The severity of the toxic drug situation took a pretty severe toll on myself and my partner earlier this year in particular, so I wasn't in a particularly great place to carry on that role, and was pretty direct about that, at that time, so they went with somebody else this year. But we still, we got a grant through community action to just do our own thing. And so that's what we've been doing. But still collaborating pretty closely with the CAT team. And so we've had a few workshops on mostly stigma, and safer supply has really been a major focus for us.  

Ben  04:12 

And we successfully lobbied to get access to the fentanyl patch prescription programme for [bleeped] which has made a big difference for us, personally, since the spring. And we're still working to get more options on the menu and to educate the local population, particularly people who might need that kind of support, about what's available in that department. As well as addressing stigma is kind of the other main thing we're working on. But so, currently, we've been doing, been collaborating with the harm reduction based in [bleeped], distributing free phones to local peers and also with BC3S, getting medical cannabis, free to local peers, which has lately been having quite a positive impact. That's good. That's finally having, getting that out there and having a good, making the options for people that are finding it preferable to use the medical cannabis to the toxic street drugs.  

Ben  05:41 

So that's a good thing that's happening. And we're just finalising plans to do another workshop later this month, and then again in November. So there's been quite a lot going on in the last little while, but I'm also the primary caregiver for my paraplegic spouse. So that's a lot of what my day to day life is focused on. 

Lucas Akai  06:01 

Now, I believe you had mentioned it before I had to stop the recording. But you had said that you've been working with, like, the same group, organisation since the 90s, I believe. So maybe just for the record, so it's on the recording, if you could just restate what that group was? 

Ben  06:09 

Well, I started with the Toronto Raver Info Project, which my husband founded with his previous partner in the early 90s. And like, he's been one of, one of the first harm reduction, peer advocates from I guess, I don't know when to start, from the very early 90s. So we moved together from Toronto to Vancouver in '95, and late '95, or something like that. And we started something called Mind Body Love in Vancouver, which was also based in the rave scene.  

Ben  06:50 

And then, was doing work with hepatitis C positive drug users, because he had that experience himself, which led him to present at a conference in Australia, and he ended up getting a job with the New South Wales Users and Aids Association in Australia. But prior to that we were working on getting the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users started, which I was the first acting president for the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. So the initial idea for that was a sort of collaboration between various drug user groups in Vancouver, but it evolved into what it is today.  

Ben  07:34 

So, mainly, I was there at the outset, helped draft the initial funding proposal that got them their, their startup grant, and that was mostly what funded them for the first quite a few years. I signed that grant proposal myself and, but we weren't, we were both in Australia for the first few years that [bleeped] was operating and then we moved to shortly after that. So we were involved in the drug user advisory group that put on a satellite symposium with the International Harm Reduction Conference that happened in Vancouver in 2005, I think it was. And that was when we launched the group that I'm representing since 2005 and currently still today.  

Lucas Akai  08:28 

Nice, nice. And so you said you had done some work in Australia? And so was that with, like, related organisations to those in Canada in terms of, like, the same goals or? 

Ben  08:42 

Well in Australia, they were able to prevent the spread of HIV amongst drug users through peer education, with this organisation the New South Wales Users and Aids Association. And having that data available was really crucial to getting the funding for the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. That was the organisation that hired [bleeped] as their education coordinator. But just due to the logistics of the immigration process, and so forth, the organisation in Australia was in quite a bit of chaos in the early 2000s, when they would have needed to support [bleeped] more, I don't know, strongly, I guess, for him to get his permanent residence in Australia and he was unable to because we're two guys. Although we were, like, in a common law marriage situation at the time.  

Ben  09:39 

If I had been a woman, I would have been able to be there working at any job that I could find. But as another guy, I had to go on a visitor's visa and couldn't really work legally while I was there, so I did some work with the organisation but not so much officially or full time, or. I was on the editorial board for the Sex Workers Outreach Project with their magazine, the Professional. There's one thing I was working on down there. But mostly, I had to just be there as a tourist sort of thing. But [bleeped] was making good money. Anyway,  it was a great experience, they have a much more open minded attitude towards employing people who use drugs in a much more robust professional capacity than we've managed to accomplish in Canada so far, so. Unfortunately, but. 

Lucas Akai  10:40 

Right. So would you say that the the Australian culture surrounding this topic is more more open than than Canada even even now? Or? 

Ben  10:50 

Absolutely. Well, they had, I don't know, for whatever reason, there's been a much greater prevalence to using opiates in particular, before they were illegal. There was like, I think 1/3 of the population or something was, was using them at one point in the early 1900s, that, that's my understanding, anyway. So, they are much more pragmatic about just letting people, they don't judge peoples' lifestyle so much as we do here. They are more tending to, you know, if you're, if you're a celebrity or something like that, and you do something silly, they'll be judgmental about that. But they basically let people, they support people to live their lives in a more healthy manner without being so judgy about it, I guess, I would say. 

Esther Cheung  11:49 

Yeah, I was curious, because you mentioned the bureaucratic system here and how you, there's, you have some misgivings about it. I guess. Could you talk more about that? Or what your thoughts on, or that even comparing it to Australia and your experience there? 

Ben  12:02 

Well, the big thing that impacted us returning to Canada, [bleeped] had been chosen to be the main organiser for the First National Canadian Harm Reduction Conference by a committee of 13 people across the country. And he went through this process twice. And they all agreed that he should be the person for the job. But then once he had signed the contract, the way that it was set up was that the [bleeped] had sole decision making power over his contract after that, and they pressured him, originally, they had said he could be based out of Vancouver, and do the job. And then they said they wanted him to find a place to live in Ontario, in Toronto, and we were in Ontario on holiday and spent our whole weekend, instead of attending the pride festivities that we had intended to attend, trying to find a place to live to do this job. And the woman who was in charge of contract just fired him outright at the end of that weekend, despite the fact that we did find a place to live. And it was very arbitrary. 

Ben  13:15 

And if we had been living in Ontario, we probably would have been able to have some legal recourse to address the situation. But with the laws being different from province to province, and we were back out here, couldn't do anything about it. So that was a major blow too, it was probably mainly because at the time, there was still no safe injection sites and been involved in setting up the safe injection site, first safe and legal safe injection site in Sydney. And he was pretty direct about thinking it was a good idea to have an on site. Injection room are safe use facility for people attending the conference. And nowadays, that's a matter of course, at any given conference, you're going to have that available, but it was too radical at the time to accept, apparently, so that's probably why they let him go. So that kind of took the wind out of his sails as far as pursuing that kind of career. For the most part, he was also dealing with this developing paraplegic condition, which is a genetic condition. So it's progressive and was less of an issue when he was in Australia, but it's increasingly debilitating, so. And that's been requiring more attention from myself as his primary caregiver, also over the years, so that's where we're at these days. 

Lucas Akai  14:49 

And so maybe just referring back again to your work in, like, the early 90s and then your work today. The changes that have happened in this toxic drug crisis, is that for the good? Like, the positive changes, is it happened about  how quickly you would have estimated to have occurred in the 90s in the early 2000s? Or does it seem slow? You're the expert opinion on this without a doubt, so. 

Ben  15:19 

Well, it's really hard to say what I would have expected. I mean, there, I guess, it would have been hard to anticipate the amount of progress that we made with Safe Injection rooms and stuff like that. But we were making some more solid progress before COVID came, and then when fentanyl took over, and with COVID happening at the same time, obviously, we didn't anticipate that. So things really back-slid considerably during that period. And so I would say that, you know, we've made a lot less progress in the last few years than I would have hoped for, certainly. And as far as the stigma issue, I don't know what exactly the solution is.  

Ben  16:12 

But I guess as long as we have prohibition, it's unlikely that we're going to make a huge amount of progress as far as the stigma goes when we're criminalising people. So that's disappointing. And it's disappointing that I mean, the safer supply thing is great, to an extent. But the, again, as long as people are criminalised for making choices outside of that system. You know, a lot of people have misgivings about getting involved in medicalizing their personal drug use or whatever, it's not hard to understand that when they're being stigmatised as criminals. I've been pretty public about my drug use and certainly, the impact that has on my employment options and stuff like that is pretty extreme. So I can understand why people don't go public or go to their doctor and say that they need this kind of thing when they're trying to earn a living. So we need more support from the mainstream and health professionals and that sort of thing to treat drug users as regular people and not just see them as the lowest common denominator, that sort of thing. I think. 

Lucas Akai  17:39 

And now, you've mentioned it a couple of times now, fentanyl, which has become a very big story in the past couple of years in particular. So has that really just, like, come out of nowhere, even in terms of, like, the experts on the street? And in these, like, crisis worker areas and has it? And how much of, like, a back-slide has it brought forward in terms of, like, the stigma, the stigmatisation of the soul?  

Ben  18:09 

Oh, it's, it's huge as, like, I think many drug users would have preferred to avoid it entirely. And I think it's not unusual, like, what happened with us was [bleeped] was being prescribed a pretty high dosage of opiate pain relief for his condition. And we lost our GP who retired and we had kind of an optimal situation prior to that, with our GP was also working at the opiate replacement clinic, which is a 20 minute drive to the next large town. And because of mobility issues, he was happy to see us at the clinic near our home.  

Ben  18:54 

And we were both, we basically moved over here to get out of the temptation of the drug market in the Greater Vancouver area. And we did quite well with recovery initially, and [bleeped] was able to have his, he was basically self medicating for pain. And the doctor recognised that and so he allowed transition from opiate replacement to receiving opiates for pain relief. And I was reducing on my Methadone and had switched over to Suboxone with the understanding that it was supposed to be easier to taper off at the end, was what I had heard, because when I started using Suboxone, my doctor had, didn't know anything about it. And I needed to sort of educate my doctor and after I started on it, it became sort of the more go to thing.  

Ben  19:55 

I'm still not really clear whether it's actually easier or harder to taper off of Suboxone. But I was on a very low dose at the time we lost our doctor and because of stigma and because the doctor was actually prescribing a higher amount of opiates than he was even legally allowed to, for my partner, and I didn't even know that, there was no other doctor willing to prescribe to [bleeped], at the point that we lost our GP. So the only option was to go on opiate replacement, which wasn't really going to do the same thing. So we ended up needing to go to the street to get, like, would have been just unbearable to just stop altogether. But at that point, it was still possible to just access actual heroin.  

Ben  20:49 

And it wasn't until COVID hit that there was, you know, it was, just became impossible to avoid fentanyl. And so and because of this situation, being both employed to do outreach in the drug using community and not having access to prescription pain relief for my partner, I relapsed at the same time. So both of us became addicted to fentanyl during the COVID lock down. And wasn't until we were able to get on to the fentanyl prescription patches in the earlier part of this year that we were able to start avoiding. It was getting really extreme in the spring. So I'm very grateful to be able to access the fentanyl prescription.  

Ben  21:37 

But I still would prefer not to be on it at all, and its just, very unfortunate set of circumstances that brought it to this point. So and you know, there's really not a lot of treatment options, especially for people with the kind of extreme mobility issues that my partner has, it's not easy to get into treatment. And it might make more sense for him to be on this kind of pain relief in the long term. But opiates aren't really the ideal thing to treat pain either in the long term. And for myself, personally, I would really rather not be on them. But I don't know exactly what I'm going to be able to do about that anytime soon because I have to be here to look after my spouse. So I can't just disappear into treatment centre for months at a time. 

Esther Cheung  22:27 

You mentioned the stigma around everything, really. But, and, but you also mentioned that you do work against stigma, right? And you do workshops, you've had a lot of personal experience with stigma, and also working against it. So how do you address stigma in these workshops that you're doing? And also, what do you think's gonna change that? 

Ben  22:53 

Well, I think that people generally believe that drug laws are in place, and it's some sort of protecting public health role, but the real origin of drug laws is racist and classist attitudes that politicians found useful to codify into laws. And that's where drug laws originated from. And so they're not really in place to protect people's health, but they're in place to make it possible to stigmatise certain segments of society and justify limiting people's access to support and that sort of thing. So I think that the, if the general public understood the origins of drug laws, and the political system reflected the understanding that people need to, I mean, people use drugs, because people use drugs, people have legitimate reasons to want to use various substances to alter their state, as most people like to have coffee in the morning or alcohol to unwind at the end of a workday or that sort of thing.  

Ben  24:09 

And that's well understood, even though alcohol is still a huge source of health deterioration for large portions of the population that use alcohol. So if we had a similar approach to other drugs, we would have less of the kind of extreme situations that people cling to to justify the stigmatisation of people who use illicit drugs today. I think that's sort of my basic take on it.  

Lucas Akai  24:43 

And so the workshops themselves, so is that like a classroom setting or is it, like, maybe expand on the details around the workshops themselves? 

Ben  24:53 

Well we try to pick venues that are going to be comfortable for people who use drugs to come to. So, public libraries tend to be a good option, or the public market here is a good place. It's centrally located. But because of the stigma, it's hard to get people to turn out even though we do pay people $25 an hour to attend. And it's just hard to publicise effectively.  

Ben  25:22 

So I think in terms of overcoming stigma, it would be, like, it would be ideal to be able to target more mainstream population as well. But in terms of empowering drug users, it's just overcoming the stigma to the extent to make it. In a rural setting like we live in, it's just much more difficult to convince people that coming to a public event is a good idea. So we've had some large turnouts to a few workshops, but in general, it's been difficult to get people to show up. So it's just, it's a chicken and egg kind of situation. I guess paying them does help. But I don't know. We've had a hard time finding the best way to promote events to get people to know where to be at the right time and that sort of thing. 

Lucas Akai  26:26 

Right, right. And so then these these workshops are centered around, um, would you say, like, educating the users, then? And not so much, like, I'm still just trying to understand the whole, the workshop aspect of it. 

Ben  26:43 

Yeah, the, it's, it's mainly aimed at empowering drug users to self represent so that they're not, their decisions aren't being made for them by people that don't have the same lived experience that they have. But we had been intending to sort of do more work with health professionals in addressing stigma before COVID came. And we were sort of gearing up to do more work around the province in that regard, before we entered lockdown, and then everything changed. So things have been really difficult for us on a personal level since COVID happened. And thankfully, we got this grant, which has made it easier to just carry on focusing on this stuff, but it's still, it's really a challenging situation in an ongoing way, I would say. 

Esther Cheung  27:48 

I'm curious to jump back into what you mentioned about the doctor prescribing Suboxone and how they were giving way too high dosage at the beginning. And really, you know more than them about it. And I was curious, how and why the doctors are not properly informed, and also how these things, how that happens? Because that is part of the, I guess, the health - they should be informed.  

Ben  28:19 

Um, well, Suboxone has some advantages in terms of being able to, I don't know, actually, since I've stopped using Suboxone, I can't really... The problem was, I think, the, the ease to just go to opiates as a pain relief thing and the challenge of addressing pain is really the, the main thing that's, like, caused a lot of people in a position like my partner to end up relying on street drugs, because first of all, it was just the go-to thing for doctors to prescribe opiates as pain relief. And then when the whole Oxycontin Purdue thing happened, even though that wasn't really as big an issue in Canada, it still basically caused the Canadian system to start to pull back on that and sort of abandoned people that were in this position.  

Ben  29:26 

Whereas, you know, it's a lot easier to maintain a healthy lifestyle if you're getting your drugs from your doctor. And doctors just started cutting people off of pain relief, sort of arbitrarily, and a lot of people were in this position where they just didn't have any other option except to go to the illicit market to get their pain relief. So like, as far as opiate replacement goes, I think that it still, like, Suboxone is pretty complicated, because it's an agonist and an antagonist. And if you are on a low dose of Suboxone, and then you, like, that's what happened to me was I was on quite a low dose. And I was able to use opiates on top of the small amount of Suboxone and I was on. And then when I stopped using Suboxone for a while, I didn't understand that if I tried to start it again, and I was using opiates, it would throw me into withdrawal, which is what makes it complicated. So I had that happen.  

 Ben  29:26 

And then, so it was no longer possible for me to just use my Suboxone, to replace the opiates. And, you know, Methadone isn't really a great option either. I think if there was more support for people to taper off of opiates with medical supervision, it would be easier to. Like, most people don't want to spend their lives in a doped-out state, you know, even if. If you just give people as much drugs as they want, they, they reduce them. They don't just keep taking more and more drugs. But if people don't feel they have options and choices, then they don't look after themselves so well and they might carry on in that kind of way because they just don't have a sense that they have better things to do with their lives.  

Ben  31:29 

So, if you're getting looked after by a physician, and you can get your drugs legally, and you're going to choose to use less so that you can do other things with your life. So it would be far preferable for people to be able to access whatever it is that they need, either through  a physician or like in, in our local situation, the doctor in charge of the opiate replacement clinic thinks it would be better for people to be able to just go to the pharmacy and get their opiates, without a prescription, through the pharmacy. That would have challenges but that could be addressed if it was understood more that people might want to have that choice available. But obviously a lot of education would have to take place before we could get to that. 

Lucas Akai  32:20 

Right, right. Now, you had mentioned the Oxycontin Purdue situation in the States and how it didn't have as great an effect in Canada. But does that type of, like, the stigmatisation in the States? Which I don't know. Would you say it's more severe in the States? Does that type of thing float north to Canada and then also doubles down the effect of the stigmatisation ? And so, like, maybe Canadian physicians are getting at least part of their information from like the mainstream media across North America in that sense? 

Ben  32:54 

Absolutely. But I mean, in the States, you can't even, you can get arrested for, for having Naloxone on you. So. 

Lucas Akai  33:01 

Right.  

Ben  33:02 

You know, we're much, we're much more practical about, you know, trying to save lives in that regard, and providing safe, clean equipment to people that are injecting and that sort of thing. Whereas in America, it's just really difficult to do any of that sort of stuff in most communities. So we're better off in that regard. But I do think as far as physicians go, and education in general, it's pretty, pretty much not well understood, the -- 

Lucas Akai  33:35 

right -- 

Ben  33:35 

difference.  

Lucas Akai  33:35 

Well, I mean, for me as an outsider looking in on this situation, right? And I don't have the, the experiences, and I can't admit to having the experience or the expert viewpoints on this. When you look at, like, the stigmatisation from the federal government, right? Compared to say, like, provincially, what kind of disconnect is there between, like, the provinces and the provincial legislation compared to, like, the federal? And how much of an impact does that have in terms of, like, day to day operations for even, for like, the workshops that you run? Like, is there issues with, on a federal level compared to, like, [the] provincial level? 

Ben  34:15 

Oh, for sure, I mean [...] Like, Justin Trudeau has said that safer supply is the key to solving the toxic drug crisis, but he is unwilling to look at legalisation or decriminalisation at the same time, with an open mind. So it just, it's it's sort of putting the money back in the hands of the same people that sort of fed into the situation by over-prescribing opioids for pain relief. Now, those people are still making money off of the safer supply prescriptions that are helping to save lives, but they don't really, especially when you can't, you know, it's just a few communities right now that can access fentanyl through prescription. 

Ben  34:59 

And so, in most communities, it's still, there's just nothing available that meets the needs of people that have become dependent on illicit fentanyl, which is so much stronger even than, like, the prescription fentanyl patches. Most people that have access to the patches carry on using illicit fentanyl because it's just on a whole, much higher spectrum of strength. So, the best option currently available is Christy Sutherland's fentanyl capsule prescriptions, where you can basically buy a similar amount and strength of fentanyl from her for a much less amount of money and then you're still getting the benefit of having a physician oversight.  

Ben  35:55 

But like, if you're living in a situation where you've been accessing illicit fentanyl, and you just get a fentanyl patch prescription, and you're still embedded in this environment where you're used to hanging out with people or the drug user has, the drug dealer has your, your phone number, or your address or whatever, you're going to have that temptation there. And it's, if, you know, it's, it's going to be easier for someone to move away from the community that they're in, if they have access to a fentanyl patch prescription. And like, this is what the doctors said in the city anyway, people tend to want to move elsewhere to recover with the help of their fentanyl patch prescription.  

Ben  36:45 

But if we can make the stronger fentanyl options or smokeable fentanyl options available to people in more communities, then they'd be able to, you know, know how much, know the strength of the drugs that they're accessing, which, like, some dealers are just so unscrupulous, they keep increasing the strength of the drugs that they're selling people and people have no control over that. And then they just get really sick if they stop. 

Ben  37:12 

And patches aren't necessarily strong enough. Like I've heard that some people are using up to 14 patches, and we were told five was the maximum. And, you know, thankfully, we have enough positive stuff going on in our lives. We're doing all right at less than five patches. But people in the city I guess are, I can't even imagine how to cope with that many patches on your body, like, running out of places to put them by then. 

Lucas Akai  37:42 

And so just for my own understanding, when you say a fentanyl patch, you mean something like a nicotine patch, right? Like, same kind of concept there?  

Ben  37:51 

Yeah.  

Lucas Akai  37:51 

Okay. Yeah. 

Ben  37:53 

So it's a steady release of a regulated amount of --

Lucas Akai  37:57 

right -- 

Ben  37:57 

of drugs. But --

Lucas Akai  37:59 

right -- 

Ben  37:59 

It still means that you need to switch them out every two or three days. And they're supposed to last for 72 hours, but they don't really maintain the same strength in the last 24 hours in my experience. So it's, it's pretty complicated, too. And then, you know, if you're just, if you're using, quote, unquote, "recreationally," or whatever, it would be preferable to be able to reduce off of them. But as long as there's not a lot of support for treatment options then -- 

Lucas Akai  38:32 

right, right -- 

Ben  38:33 

there's, you're just sort of stuck in the same milieu. And you're going to have the tendency to relapse. And that's the way that it's been for a long time, even before fentanyl came along. 

Lucas Akai  38:46 

And you said that you live, not necessarily rural, but out of like the big city.


Ben  38:51

Yeah.


Lucas Akai  38:51 

Is that something that's available? Like, widespread? Like, are the physicians in, like, these more non-city areas more prepared for these types of, like, crises, or? 

Ben  39:05 

No, I mean, you need to be motivated yourself to, if you're, if you're moving out of a situation like that, then it's mainly people that are determined to change their lives that are are going to be able to make that work for them. And I guess we're lucky here that we have been able to educate the doctors at the local clinic and a lot of, there's just a lot of communities, you can't access it at all. And even people that are accessing other safer supply options, non-fentanyl options that give them a little bit of breathing room. They still are sort of policed because of stigma. They can have their safer supply prescriptions cut off and it's just very dangerous and less than ideal in many ways. 

Esther Cheung  39:54 

Is there anything else that I mean, we've touched over a bunch of topics today, like, kind of gleaned over them, but. Is there anything else that we should, you want to share that we should know? Or that you'd like to expand on?  

Ben  40:06 

Well, I just, it would be great if people understood that there's a lot of, like, blue collar workers who to earn their livelihood, they are impacted on a physical level, by their jobs, and they don't necessarily have the option of going to a doctor to get pain relief. So they end up getting it from some black market source, and then they're immediately at risk of overdose in the current environment. These are, like, not people that you'd recognise as drug users based on the kind of concept people have drug users. So it's just a much more normal thing than people recognise.  

Ben  40:53 

And it's just, the fact is that it should be, it should be understood that anybody and everybody is susceptible to using drugs and the risks involved in using drugs and, and the possibility of turning, like, 75% of people, apparently, who develop drug problems can turn their lives around and actually have equal or better lives than they had prior to their drug use, at least. This statistic is probably not reflective of the reality since fentanyl started dominating the situation. But in a world where there's more support for people to to recover, there's no reason to expect people to decline just because they've had a run in with illegal drugs or have even developed a problem with illegal drugs. 

Ben  41:49 

Most people are, are able to improve their situation with, if they have the support of family and community. And it's just the most vulnerable people in our community, that wind up in the situation where they have the kind of really terrible outcomes that people identify with. As, you know, the typical drug user is not really a typical drug user. It's because of their lack of support from family and loved ones and the community in general. That's what I would like people to understand better. 

Caitlin Burritt  42:21 

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 for listening.