Canadian culture perpetuates the opioid crisis – if you think you are smarter than experts on the situation, you are part of the problem. People love to talk bad about supervised consumption sites (SCS) and look at addicts as a cancer on society, while disregarding what social workers, addictions councillors and doctors say. Some people are too arrogant to realize how complex the crisis is and think it can be fixed over-night.
Some people think drugs themselves are the problem. People will tell you if you try drugs, you will become addicted and your life will be ruined. The simple solution seems to be, don’t do drugs. This is not a solution because drugs are not causing the crisis, they are only driving it.
Most people who become addicted to drugs are susceptible to addiction, before even trying substances. Among people returning to the United States after fighting in the Vietnam war, 43 per cent reported having used narcotics while deployed. Upon returning from the war, only seven per cent of these users reported being addicted to substances at home.
This means people do not become addicted by trying drugs, but by circumstance that drives them to addiction. Many of the soldiers who used in Vietnam reported addiction, but only a small portion kept the addiction when they returned home.
In his book, In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts, Dr. Gabor Maté says stress is a major factor that can lead a person to addiction. When soldiers were removed from the situation causing stress, many of them were able to overcome addiction.
“The root of all addiction is social exclusion, social isolation, traumatic experiences,” said Jerry Firth, manager of the Indigenous recovery program at Arches in Lethbridge.
The opioid crisis is much more complex than people think, a solution has to involve a major change in our way of thinking. Canadians need to put more focus on community and connection and less on things that isolate us.
People like to judge people suffering from drug addiction, but a lot of time, these people do it with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other.
All addictions change the chemistry of the brain and this can cause physical withdrawal symptoms. A person suffering from addiction not only has to deal with the isolation, exclusion and trauma that haunts them, but also has to make a conscious decision to change. This is quite the task for a person whose brain is essentially being controlled by outside sources.
Instead of spending time on social media arguing about problems we do not understand, we should be making an effort to understand how, as a community, we can make changes for the better.
By isolating people suffering from addiction and downplaying the pain felt by these people, we perpetuate the problem.
“Mental health itself is only recently being spoken about publicly and even there, it is still sheltered and isolated conversations. Addiction, I think, is even further behind and people being able to truly understand what it means and what it is, how people experience it, what causes it and ways to move through it,” said Firth.
By ignoring pain and trauma in our culture, we leave people hurt and vulnerable. This is what is causing the “war on drugs.” It is not a war on drugs, it is a war on addictions and disconnection.
