Vigil to highlight overdose awareness
Jeanie Adams’ daughter had just turned 28 when she died.
Adams remembers coming home days before the birthday celebration to find two people from the police department at her door.
“I knew in my heart,” she said in her northwest Edmonton home Thursday, a photo of her daughter hanging by the entranceway. “I knew something was wrong.”
Shawna Adams was victim to an accidental fentanyl overdose in late November 2017.
This Friday evening, just under nine months later, Adams will share her daughter’s story at a commemoration for International Overdose Awareness Day. She’s among a half-dozen who will speak at Constable Ezio Faraone Park beginning at 7 p.m. before a vigil crosses the High Level Bridge, lit in purple as a tribute.
Adams recalls her daughter as a “loving, caring person” who would give anything for her two children, ages seven and five. An abusive partner led her to substance use, something she struggled to end despite facing numerous barriers.
Adams’ hope is that public events like Friday’s will help destroy a stigma that continues to raise those barriers.
“I’m hoping that people will change the way they think about somebody who has an illness — it’s an illness, addiction is an illness,” she said. “And I hope that they change the way they look at somebody who has that illness. Because my daughter … was sick.”
Dr. Elaine Hyshka, co-chairwoman of the provincial Opioid Emergency Response Commission, will speak at the event. She said the stigma against drug users was a contributing factor to the death rate: in 2018, approximately two Albertans die every day from an overdose. There was a decline quarter by quarter, she said, but the numbers were still far worse than last year.
Petra Schulz, co-founder of Moms Stop the Harm, who lost her son to an overdose, reinforced that the day ’s theme is Time to Remember, Time to Act.
“I hope people will come away understanding that substance use and overdose can happen to anyone and that it’s OK and that it’s important to talk about it and support one another,” Schulz said.
Streetworks Edmonton will also be at the event. Early on Friday the organization will provide naloxone kits, memorial ribbons and other information at four booth locations: Whyte Avenue and Gateway Boulevard, Beaver Hills House Park, the Alberta legislature and Boyle Street Community Services.