Drug Poisoning and the Pandemic

Kate – Trust and listening

Kate – explains how having someone you trust is super important so that you can have a space space to go to

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 – My art and my brother

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

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.

Christian – Grieving spaces

Christian talks grieving spaces and people coming together when grieving

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 – Grieving the whole person

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

Nicole – Power of Speaking About Lost Ones

Nicole discusses the importance of sharing memories of those lost to drug poisoning and speaking their names.

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

Christian – COVID amplified the inequities in society

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

Kate – Time to process

Kate shares about time and processing her grief especially during COVID