ADDICTION RECOVERY
Some struggle to get help
Carson Connelly flashes an easy smile as he talks about his landscaping job, helping a friend promote a new streetwear line of men’s clothing, and giving up everything addictive in his life — even caffeine.
But the path to this contentment was a rocky one. Less than a year ago, he was still in the throes of a 15-year drug addiction that nearly killed him. He was kept alive by naloxone and other harm-reduction services, but he wishes along the way it had been easier to get treatment and recovery help.
“There is no magic pill or juice that is going to fix someone like me. There has to be more to it than that, but there’s nothing,” he said during an interview at a Metro Vancouver treatment facility.
A new report by the B.C. Centre on Substance Use, called The Path Forward, underscores the need for a clear and accessible path to recovery for those who want it. Despite efforts to manage the opioid overdose crisis through harm reduction, the crisis continues with 1,449 deaths in 2017 and 620 in the first five months of this year.
Connelly, 33, was nearly one of those statistics. Over a five-day stretch last summer, he overdosed three times: once in a Downtown Eastside alley and twice in a private home. He was revived each time using naloxone, but during the last overdose he had turned blue by the time paramedics arrived and they had to inject him with the overdose-reversing medication four times to save him.
Shortly after that near-death experience, the well-spoken young man from North Vancouver finally got the help he needed from the abstinence-based recovery program at Last Door in New Westminster. He wishes there had been more focus on treatment earlier in his harrowing journey.
“I think it’s insane that recovery and abstinence-based (treatment) isn’t encouraged more in this province or in this country. It’s scary the state of things right now. I feel fortunate I’ve been given the opportunity to be freed from these substances and the prescriptions and all the shit that comes with it.”
The new report calls for resources to create an effective system that emphasizes treatment and recovery. Among the needs it identified are ensuring timely referrals to treatment and especially withdrawal treatment or detox, equitable access to services regardless of income, better education and training for treatment providers, increased recovery services for women and vulnerable populations, better recovery programs inside provincial jails, and better enforcement of standards for recovery residences.
Connelly ’s decline into addiction began with his drinking at age 14. By 18, he was in the psychiatric ward at Lion’s Gate Hospital in North Vancouver after nine days of bingeing on cocaine.
“I was not thinking clearly, that’s for sure,” he said. “All I know is that I wanted to stop. I wanted to stop feeling the way I was feeling, but I didn’t know how.”
Given the choice between staying in psychiatric care or detoxing, Connelly chose detox. But soon he was back using.
“I liked the way drugs made me feel or not feel for periods of time,” he said. “It was an escape from my own head. I didn’t know how to deal with my emotions and feelings properly and it was the quick, easy fix and I became addicted.”
I was not thinking clearly, that’s for sure. All I know is that I wanted to stop. I wanted to stop feeling the way I was feeling, but I didn’t know how.
A few years ago, Connelly was homeless and so sick that he was in St. Paul’s palliative care unit. Physicians put him on morphine and methadone. When Connelly checked himself out, the only followup care offered was a prescription for methadone — an opioid-replacement drug that, taken daily, wards off withdrawal symptoms. But it doesn’t stop the cravings.
Eventually, Connelly was tapered off methadone and put on Suboxone, another harm-reduction therapy. Like methadone, it staves off withdrawal, but it also contains naloxone, which counteracts the effects of opioids and prevents overdosing.
Although studies have shown both of these opioid replacement therapies to be effective in addictions treatment, Connelly never stopped using illicit drugs. He’s far from unique among methadone patients; there were 16,900
of them in B.C. in 2015-16. A recent study indicated that a quarter of the British Columbians who have died since the fentanyl crisis began had traces of methadone in their body.
Patients on opioid-replacement therapies are supposed to be routinely monitored with random urine tests. Connelly said he was tested only once, even though he’d show up at a 24-hour pharmacy high or “mangled from the street” at 3:30 a.m. to get his prescription filled.
Connelly left the Downtown Eastside about two years ago and moved to Coquitlam, where he had better housing but couldn’t get clean. A friend persuaded him to try the Last Door, where he went nine months ago. Since he has no assets, Connelly’s treatment is fully paid for by government.
“Here they’ve given me a blueprint to live,” he said. “It would be nice to see more people get that opportunity because what is going on right now isn’t working. I’ve seen so many people die in the past few years, it’s crazy.”
A TYPICAL STORY
While the details are unique, the broad strokes of Connelly’s life and his struggles with addiction are typical for addicts who aren’t pilots, physicians, nurses or anyone else whose job involves the safety of others. If he’d been one of them, Connelly would have been sent to a private residential treatment program at the first sign of addiction. There, he would have likely remained for at least 30 days and would have had intensive aftercare, including counselling, either one-on-one or in a group.
Connelly might also have received that kind of care if he’d worked somewhere that had a good employee benefits plan.