As the COVID-19 pandemic consumed time, attention and resources over the last two years, the opioid crisis has steadily — somewhat quietly — grown worse.
The Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit recently called upon the province to take a number of actions to address the growing opioid crisis, but people like Johanne Logue and Evelyn Pollock, like many others in the community, have already lost family members.
Logue, who lost her 33-year-old son, Shawn, on April 30, 2020, to opioid poisoning, spoke of how her son’s life was heading in a good direction before COVID-19 shut down his support system.
After struggling with addiction over the course of a decade, and experiencing bouts of homelessness, Shawn put in a tremendous amount of work to reclaim his life, Logue said.
“Shawn really fought from 2016 on,” she said. “He got a job with A&G Roofing. He started going to meetings. He fell off the wagon a couple of times and had a couple of overdoses, and then he decided he was going to get his own place.”
“Shawn was a hard worker when he set his mind to do whatever he wanted to do,” she said. “He was very family oriented. He loved his family.”
Logue said the resources made available to her son were working for him.
“He faithfully went to his NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meetings and AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings, which he really felt like that was a second family; he felt like that was a really safe place to be,” she said. “He had all the support. He hung out with positive people.”
After another relapse, Shawn checked himself into a three-month rehab program at the Seven South Street Treatment Centre in Orillia in 2020.
“He was doing excellent. He had little notes in his journal that he felt really alive, never felt like that for years, and he really was on the right track,” she said. “He got out March 17, 2020, and on March 18, 2020, everything started closing down.”
Due to the first wave of COVID-19, Shawn lost his support system.
“They all closed down. When you get out of rehab, your most vulnerable time is your first three months out of rehab, and none of the supports existed," Logue explained.
“The support system kind of failed them, and maybe five of the people from NA would go to a parking lot and just try to have a meeting, or try to stay connected and be supportive for one another, but even that had to stop,” she said. “He really felt backed up against the wall. He came and stayed with me for a little bit, but then he was worried if he got me sick (with COVID-19), I'd be in trouble.”
He died of opioid poisoning in his apartment on April 30, 2020.
In Simcoe-Muskoka, 245 deaths occurred through the first 19 months of the pandemic, a 69 per cent increase over the 145 deaths in the previous 19 months.
Provincially, there have been 200 or more opioid poisoning deaths through 15 of the first 19 months of the pandemic, a figure that had never been reached prior to COVID-19.
The 1,703 opioid-related deaths tallied in Ontario through the first nine months of 2020 were eclipsed by 2,035 deaths through the first nine months of 2021.
Logue has started doing advocacy work to address the opioid crisis, and plans to hold a walk for overdose awareness in August.
She said that she wants to see greater access to treatment options, including rehab programs, safe consumption sites, and counselling for mental health and addiction issues.
“When you're addicted to this kind of stuff, your life can end in one day,” she said. “Shawn lucked out because we really pushed, he got (into rehab) within a month, but some of them are waiting three months.
“Where's the rehab facility in Orillia for women?” she added.
Evelyn Pollock, who lost her 43-year-old son, Daniel, to fentanyl poisoning in 2017, stressed the need for additional work to tackle the opioid crisis.
She has been advocating to address the crisis since 2018 and feels that, while elected officials and public health agencies have tried, they need to have a more co-ordinated effort.
“There was no co-ordination on the opioid crisis across organizations,” she said. “Everybody was working in a separate silo, spending their own money on stigma and doing this and writing that.”
Pollock, an Oro-Medonte resident, has worked over the last several years with other women who have lost children to opioid poisoning.
Part of their work has included organizing campaigns in Barrie and Orillia media, and giving deputations at Barrie council, petitioning all levels of government to declare a public health emergency.
As opioid deaths mounted through the pandemic, she questioned why one crisis has been treated differently than the other.
“There were two pandemics going on,” she said. “One was already in existence, killing a lot of young people, leaving children without a father or mother, leaving mothers without a daughter or son.”
“(With COVID-19), we poured money and pulled together the brightest minds in the medical industries, in the pharmaceutical industries, everywhere, to act quickly,” she said. “I believe that every single social service person is doing the best they can, but they're overwhelmed, and they don't know what to do. But we knew what to do with (the COVID-19) pandemic, didn't we?”
Pollock described Daniel was a kind and intelligent person.
He wrote a memoir about his experiences, titled Thirty-three Years to Conception, and had taken up sculpting and carving with his mother, but he struggled with drug use and occasional bouts of homelessness throughout his life.
“He had periods of time where he was in jail, quite a bit of time spent because of panhandling tickets that he didn't pay on the street,” she said.
“The criminal justice system didn't help him at all,” she said. “Our society criminalizes people who have mental health and drug addiction issues, and they call them abuser, but they're not abusers. They're people who fall into something unknowingly, and their neurological impulses change, sometimes permanently, and it's very difficult to stop that cycle.”
Pollock said her son ultimately died of an accidental opioid poisoning, and that his life had been moving in a positive direction when he passed at 43.
“My son had a history of drug use, and when he died he was under the care of an addiction doctor,” she said. “He was making regular visits. He was trying to control it.
“He had skills in his 40s when he moved up to Orillia,” she said. “He was producing incredible sculptures, geometric sculptures out of limestone and granite. He was an author. I don't believe that he chose to die.”
Despite the recent climb in opioid deaths, Pollock believes the resources are available to meaningfully tackle the crisis.
“There is a way, and I think it's just finding that way, and having charismatic leaders take over,” she said. “They exist. We've got so many fabulous programs in Orillia, in Barrie, that the community operates. However, you need the voice that brings them together and makes sure it gets done.”
