Rehabs aren’t always safe havens from fentanyl

Ayoung man died from a fentanyl overdose in a downtown rehab last week. There was a time, not that long ago, when such a tragedy would be news on the strength of its irony. But today, death by fentanyl has become so commonplace in this city, how and where one person dies — tragic irony or not — is simply of less newsworthiness than the bigger picture: That our sons and daughters, moms and dads, sisters and brothers continue to succumb to this scourge at a rate that is, frankly, numbing.

Some are dying in the streets. Some are dying at home. Some are dying on the bathroom floors of rehabs.

I have a longtime friend living in the treatment facility where this young man died last week. We met at a Waves coffee shop Monday on the corner of Pender and Bute to talk about the incident. My friend, who I will call Scott to ensure his anonymity, is in his fourth month of sobriety.

“He was 30,” Scott told me of the victim, whose name I have also chosen to keep anonymous, so let’s call him Mike. “He was just a kid — a really positive guy with a really loud voice. I always liked what he had to say. He was smart and quick-witted.”

On the night of the incident, Mike was talking with others in the facility about going to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting at Harbour Light, a detox centre around Cordova and Main.

Scott called this area “the war zone.”

“Nobody wanted to go to that meeting with him,” he said. “It was welfare day. Welfare day is a really hard time to be in that neighbourhood if you are working on your recovery.”

It’s not known if Mike made it to the meeting, but somewhere along the way, either coming or going, he picked up.

“I woke up around 12:30,” Scott told me. “Someone started pounding on my door and yelling: ‘Narcan!’ ”

Residents in this facility are encouraged to be trained in the administration of naloxone. If you have a kit in your room, you indicate this by a sign on your bedroom door.

“I was fumbling around in the dark looking for my kit. Then I heard someone outside my room yell” that it was Mike, he said.

There were five people there when Scott ran in. One of the five had already narcanned Mike three times.

“I went to turn him over and knew the moment my hand touched his skin that he’d been there a long time,” Scott said.

“I shot him in the leg. This was the 23rd Narcan kit I have used in the past year. Having never lost anyone, I didn’t want to give up, so I went through the motions as I was taught them. I did chest compressions and tried to open his airways, but there was nothing. He was just this God-awful colour.”

Paramedics arrived minutes later and worked on Mike for 45 minutes.

“It was amazing how hard they worked to bring him back,” he said. “They pulled him out into the main room and gave it all they had, but he was too far gone. When I rolled him over in the bathroom, there was a way his head (moved) that I knew he was dead.

“I wasn’t overly close to this young man, but he managed to trigger in me all of the grief from all of the losses I’ve experienced recently. So many friends have died. I cried a lot — more than I have ever cried. I think it’s because I was in the safest place I’ve known in a long time and we were all sharing what it was we were thinking and feeling about this tragedy.

“I think about what I have put my family through. I never want to do that to them again.”

I will share more of Scott’s journey to sobriety on Sunday.