Drug Poisoning and the Pandemic

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 – 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.

Kate – Triggers

Kate discusses how she deals with her emotions when something triggers her grief

Nicole – Pandemic’s Effect on Grieving as a Community

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

Kate – My story

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

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.

Christian – Denial and grieving

Christian discusses what happens after members of the community die from drug poisoning and how it’s OK for grief to be messy

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.

Nicole – Pandemic Leads to Increase in Drug Poisoning

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

Joyce -The pandemics impact on drug poisonings

Joyce talks about drug poisonings during the pandemic