Drug Poisoning and the Pandemic

Kristal – Professional Experience and Work

Kristal discusses being a peer support woker, working on a one on one level with community members to help them with their goals related to substance abuse. She supports those in the community dealing with loss and grief. She speaks to everyone’s experience with loss and grief being very individual.

Kristal – Activism To Ease Anger and Grief

Kristal discusses using activism to help ease or channel her anger from the loss of those in her community to drug poisoning. She talks about her grief being very quiet and inward before, but that taking action helps her to move through it. She discusses how there may not be peace from these losses, but the goal should rather be feeling safe in the emotions.

Nicole – Working in Community Outreach

Nicole discusses her work in community outreach and how she has lived experience with addiction and living rough.

Kristal – Drug Poisoning During Pandemic Stigma

Kristal discusses how the pandemic has created additional stigma surrounding those who use drugs. She dissuses how it seems like some losses are treated as more deserving of being mourned than others. Many people have had to grieve privately instead of publically within a community. She touches on the state of the public health system during the pandemic.

Kristal – Lack of Memorials During Pandemic

Kristal talks about how memorials can offer closure to people who are grieving, find a community, and share stories. With the absence of this during the pandemic, many people turned inward to grieve or isolated, which can create safety issues and have an impact on mental health. She speaks to how this leads to depression, physical pain, and it compounds upon itself.

Kate – Stigma

Kate discusses how difficult the stigma is to deal with

Kate – Things I do that help

Kate talks about how art, hiking and visiting the cemetery can be very therapeutic

Kate – My story

Kate tells her story of being away when her brother died of an opioid overdose

Christian – Autonomy for the homeless

Christian discusses those who are unhoused and how they want a space that is theirs and how we need to take that seriously especially when it comes to grief

Kristal – The Value of all Those Lost

Kristal emphasizes that the lives of those lost to drug poisoning had value, they were an opportunity that was lost, and that the community is missing so much in their absence.

Nicole – Using Art and Creativity to Express Grief

Nicole discusses the work she does to allow access to creative outlets such as art hives and gardening.

Kate – COVID and grieving with my parents

Kate shares about how COVID was stress on top of dealing with the loss of her brother