On Thursday January 24th UBC Coordinated Arts Program had the opportunity to participate in a hands-on naloxone training program hosted at the Point Grey Campus. The workshop was provided through the Law and Society Stream of which I am a part and was run by Karmik, a harm reduction organization located on the West Coast. The session was intended to link knowledge learned in class with the real world. Throughout the evening, the concepts of of homelessness, overdose, and gentrification had never felt so close to home, yet out of reach at the same time.
Although we had been made aware of this event taking place since the beginning of term one, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect when signing up to participate. Of course, I knew about the opioid crisis taking place in the Downtown Eastside, as well as throughout Vancouver as a whole (and several other major metropolitan centres across north America), but I hadn’t put much thought into my own ability to contribute positively to the epidemic in any way. I definitely wasn’t expecting to be in a room with about thirty other 18-year old’s all holding live sharps over teddy bears on a regular Thursday evening at UBC.
Throughout the course of the evening we covered a lot of information including some unsettling statistics and numbers that I had no real awareness of until then. For example, 72% of overdose incidents are related to accidental fentanyl intake. This is one of the key reasons why Karmik functions as a resource to train any capable person how to respond in case of overdose. The session our class participated in gave use the knowledge of how to use the naloxone kits, as well as actually distributing the kits to all those in attendance. In doing so, Karmik effectively increased the number of kits in use in Vancouver, more specifically on UBC campus.
In addition to the standard training, and statistics related to the Downtown East Side the staff and volunteers from Karmik made an effort to do more than just list off numbers that might otherwise go unheard. Instead they spoke about personal and real-life experiences. By recounting their own stories of drug use and being extremely honest about their habits, they made the subject of overdose more real to all participants. Munroe was just one member of the Karmik team who stood out as being particularly self confident and self aware of her relationship as a user. The way in which they spoke so casually about drug usage surprised me, but I also felt it was an extremely effective way of approaching the subject. The vulnerability with which Munroe and her colleagues discussed personal experiences completely opposed the stigma and secrecy typically surrounding drug use. By opening up the conversation they also advocate in a way for a more open discussion on how we can all play a role in harm reduction as a whole.
To be sure, the practical tools taught in these types of training sessions are extremely valuable ( and potentially life saving!), but I think a bigger part of what the training is meant to do is to offer a new perspective. While the Karmik staff can only speak from individual and personal experience, these are experiences most of us in the classroom have never had to undergo. When faced with real life examples of what drug use and overdose can do, I realize how little I had truly engaged with these concepts in class. Hearing the stories and points of view raised throughout the training session put me in the mindset of “okay this is actually happening, it’s real, it’s serious, and it’s a situation that I have the potential to change with my actions”.
This piece relates to so much more than the administration of naloxone, but rather to the issue of harm reduction and the opioid crisis in general. In teaching the practical tools required to use naloxone kits, as well as developing an assertive yet understanding way in which to address drug use and addictions, harm reduction becomes a realistic possibility rather than a far fetched and distant concept. The training session was able to do more than teach a potentially life-saving skill, but also presented the frame of mind with which to approach the concept of overdose and drug usage in the DTES, making it real and impossible to ignore.
