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.
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.