Drug Poisoning and the Pandemic

Kate – Time to process

Kate shares about time and processing her grief especially during COVID

Kristal – Attending Memorials as a Support Worker

Kristal discusses the importance of finding ways to honour people that have been lost and how they have impacted you. She speaks to how she often chooses not to attend public memorials for those she has lost as a support worker as they are often very overwhelming. Instead, she has her own personal rituals or ways of honouring those she has lost personally including opening a window. She discusses how this practice was used when she worked in palliative care.

Christian – Language around those pushed to the margins

Christian talks about how people who are pushed to the margins are not discussed as part of our community and how we need to include them. As a community how do we care for our neighbours and how do we mourn the loss of our neighbours

Nicole – Pandemic’s Effect on Grieving as a Community

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

Christian – Grieving those who died of drug poisoning

Christian talks about grieving, stigma and dying from drug poisoning

Christian – Grieving the whole person

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

Joyce -The pandemics impact on drug poisonings

Joyce talks about drug poisonings during the pandemic

Laura- Loss to Covid & Disconnection

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.

Kate – Triggers

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

Christian – COVID amplified the inequities in society

Christian talks about those that have very little and how COVID amplified their difficulties

Kristal – Story of Lived Experience

Kristal discusses experiencing homelessness at multiple stages of her life and how that informs her work as a peer support worker. It gives her an understanding of the nuance that surrounds the community. She uses this experience to support people who are experiencing grief related to death from drug poisoning.