Keys, phone, naloxone: In downtown Ottawa, the antidote to opioid overdoses has become an item some people won’t leave home without
Keys, phone, naloxone: In downtown Ottawa, the antidote to opioid overdoses has become an item some people won’t leave home without
St. Albans has become a bulwark against the rising tide of crisis in a neighbourhood overrun with addiction and homelessness, even supplying naloxone to paramedics when official supplies run low
Since the congregation took naloxone training in March, there’s been seven outside St. Albans. But that number is quite modest. At the drop-in centre beneath the church, where some of Ottawa’s most afflicted seek daytime refuge once the overnight shelters close, they’re doing at least one [naloxone application] a day.
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Meh, opioid addiction is a waste of our time. We should let them figure it out themselves. They're all adults.
You don't understand why people are addicted to drugs
I think you don't understand it. These people made a choice to start using drugs and got addicted. It sucks but they made that choice.
Not sure why the rest of society needs to pay for their shitty decisions.
I genuinely can't tell if you're serious or not
100% serious why should I care about drug addicts and criminals killing themselves? Let them.
Wild
Should I rush to stop someone who wants to do bad things to themselves? They're an adult.
So you're the same person who says "do a flip" when somebody is on the edge of a building?
What no materialist analysis does to a mfer
Fundamentally, opioids are painkillers. Some of these people got hooked because their doctors prescribed them these drugs. Others may have been self-medicating for chronic physical pain. Are you blaming them for being in pain? There seems to be a physiological and genetic component to addiction—an inborn reason why some people get addicted to drugs or alcohol while others escape even if their circumstances are the same—that we're only beginning to explore. Are you blaming them for their ancestry? Still others get addicted because they needed mental health support while going through a bad patch and didn't get it. "Shitty decisions" are almost never the only factor in an addiction. Often, they're not even a significant one.
The rash of overdose deaths we've been seeing these past few years are due to the powers that be tightening controls on prescription-grade opioids, which have a known dosage per pill and seldom killed anyone even when being taken without a doctor's endorsement. Without the prescription pills, people who were already addicted were forced to turn to street drugs that can't be dosed properly because the purity varies from baggie to baggie. We've killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people as an unintended consequence of the War On (Some) Drugs—so yeah, this is society's fault.
Who hurt you?
No one. Just tired of enabling the scourge of our society and disproportionately investing in people who elect to be a drain on us all. Destroying our downtowns and making everyone unsafe.
Yeah it's entirely the individuals fault and not a societal failing or anything. Every other country also has this problem for sure
Society made them do illegal drugs? Ohh boy I guess no one has any agency. We're all children and need the state to help us.
Ah yes and everyone who has stolen food is just evil and should be jailed because they didn't want to starve? Material conditions can substantial alter people's decision making. If youre stuck in the cycle of poverty knowing very well you aren't making it out, why not do hard drugs? You're never making it anywhere anyway.
Would you have said it was every individual Chinese person fault that they had an opium epidemic and not the British and Chinese administration for allowing the production and trade of opium to be so prevalent? Yes people have agency but if you trap someone in a box and put some heroin in it they'll do it eventually
Ah yes and everyone who has stolen food is just evil and should be jailed because they didn’t want to starve?
Ahh yes food and hard drugs are the same thing. Jesus give your head a shake. You don't need to do drugs.
If youre stuck in the cycle of poverty knowing very well you aren’t making it out, why not do hard drugs? You’re never making it anywhere anyway.
We are 14th in the world for mobility. So how do you figure you're stuck. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
Oh I'm not referring to myself, I live quite well. I just think it's shitty to let people rot when it's so easy to help them. You have to be an incredibly bitter person to believe someone deserves death because they were desperate for some sort of comfort
I've talked to a few people and I can see how you can get there. To be honest, I've gotten pretty down myself.
A lot of people on drugs are, well, not nice people. It doesn't take too many instances of having your bike or mail stolen, picking needles out of your dog's foot, not being able to let your kids use the park next door, or being woken up by someone pounding your door at 2am looking for the crackhouse down the street, or talking to another neighbourhood business that's considering closing because they're done with shoplifting, harassment and/or breakins.
It gets tiresome, and it really, really drains your empathy to see supports given to people, only to see those same people rob you blind three days later, especially when they have access to medical care via a clinic and you don't.
Now, to be clear, I do see that this is a systemic problem, and that a lot of addicts are where they are because the system is broken and they're collateral damage, so I'm sympathetic, but a lot of people who are allies could spend some time understanding why people who aren't addicts but are victims of crime addicts perpetuate are resentful.
The problem is, Allies can be both a) terribly arrogant, and b) irritatingly exclusionary. Case in point: pre-pandemic, the local support network where I lived opened pop-up safe-use+free-meal sites in the park next door to where I live. I walked over and told them "I'm really glad to see a safe-injection site" and how it'll help the area and got an absolute earful of angry correction about how they're not called "safe-injection" sites any more and that it isn't about helping the community, it's about saving lives.
That pretty much, instantly, put me off helping this particular organization, and I've seen that attitude--that monstrous chip-on-the-shoulder on the part of a number of Allies--put off local businesses and citizens who would normally like to help.
Allies really need to here this, because it's important: victims of crime are in a place where they are disinclined to care about saving addicts' lives, and if you want the support of people in the community for services that will help save addicts' lives, bridge-building is important. And to tie it back to the above poster: berating them for not caring isn't going to make them care, but explaining to them how services that support addicts result in less crime and less hazardous waste will.
I sincerely hope you never try opioids.