Drug Poisoning and the Pandemic

Nicole – Pandemic’s Effect on Grieving as a Community

Nicole discusses the ways the pandemic has affected the way people grieve as a community.

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.

Nicole – Pandemic Leads to Increase in Drug Poisoning

Nicole discusses the increase in drug poisonings during the pandemic due to a number of factors.

Kate – Getting support

Kate talks about how difficult it is to ask for support

Kristal – Anger with Grief

Kristal discusses finding ways to channel her anger due to poor policy leading to deaths from drug poisoning and those individuals not having the support they needed. She discusses how human beings have the right to be flawed and should have the ability to grow, heal, and change.

Nicole – Working in Community Outreach

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

Nicole – Grieving as a community

Nicole discusses the power of grieving together as a community. Finding connection and trust.

Christian – Grieving the whole person

Christian talks about how we choose remember people when there has been a loss to drug poisoning

Kate – My art and my brother

Kate talks about being an artist and expression through art can remind her of her brothers encouragement

Thoughts on International Overdose Awareness Day 2023

We lead multifaceted lives, and the deaths of those we love who have died by drug poisoning contain multitudes. The death of a loved one can bring intense grief, shock, anger, shame, or guilt. People who use drugs, and those who love them that they leave behind, face stigma in North America’s dominant, settler culture.

Kristal – Poetry, Comedy, & Art for Grieving

Kristal discusses using poetry and other forms of creative expression as a distraction from her grief and to disassociate in a safe and productive way. She discusses grief being love with nowhere to go, so she puts it into art.