The Sanguen Health Centre, the Waterloo Region Drug Action Team (WR DAT) and the AIDS Committee of Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and Area (ACCKWA) hosted a viewing of the short film Haven at the central branch of the Kitchener Public Library. The viewing was followed by a panel with healthcare workers and members of the community with lived experience of substance use.
Carolyn Shafer, nurse practitioner with the Sanguen Health Centre, and Megan Boyle, care facilitator with the Sanguen Health Centre, introduced the film with a presentation on the ongoing opioid crisis.
Shafer’s husband was prescribed oxycontin for pain and underwent a difficult detoxification process on his own.
“When he was prescribed Oxycontin, he did not know it was an opioid. He was not told it could lead to dependency or withdrawal,” Shafer said. “Like many others, once he began using more because it was working well, his prescriber abruptly cut him off his prescription. He was given no direction of where to go from there.”
Haven explored the users of the Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver, where participants are provided medical-grade heroin for use. Lynda, a participant who has lost both her sons, and Max, a participant who was the sole survivor of a car accident, can focus on healing when they do not have to focus on procuring their next dose.
The panel included Shafer; Michael Parkinson, a drug strategy specialist and consultant; Jennae Robins, a program participant who has had multiple injuries since age 16; Daniel Tower, a peer outreach worker at Sanguen Health Centre; and Andrew Scott Entwistle, a program participant.
Panelists spoke about the freedom that safe injection programs provide. Robins said that the safer supply program allows for more freedom.
“[You] can still live your life in a regular way that you would anybody else…I can still go and visit family if I want to,” she said.
Tower was injured in a motorcycle accident and suffered multiple herniated discs. When he was unable to get prescriptions, he had to turn to street drugs for pain management. Eventually, Tower went to jail as well.
While there were some programs in jail, they were not as helpful, Tower said. Here, he has found that people he grew up with now also look up to him.
“I see a lot of people that I know from the past, and I see their lives and actually tell me they look up to me. They admire they can see how much I’ve changed, and it touches me, man, and makes me want to cry,” he said. like it’s crazy. Nobody’s seen so much of a change. I mean, it’s that’s amazing.
Tower helps direct community members toward services they may need, including naloxone and housing. He also works with the consumption treatment services site at Sanguen Health Centre.
Shafer said that safer supply programs help not only with substance use, but also with other healthcare needs. For example, Sanguen Health Centre provides help with system navigation, sexually transmitted diseases and infection screening, and episodic and chronic disease management, among others.
She said more funding is needed to provide services to more people that need them, since the program does sometimes have to turn people away.
“[T]his should be seen as life saving medication for people, and it’s not and that’s where we really struggle, because we should not be turning anyone away who is using the illicit street going in and out of it, anyone who is using the toxic street supply should have access to regulated drugs,” she said. “And we’re not there yet.”
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