Ontario supervised consumption site users speak out on closures
CBC
Reggie Garrett remembers snippets of the first time he was saved from a fatal overdose.
A few years ago, while at a supervised consumption site in downtown Toronto, he overdosed on fentanyl, with the powerful opioid working to shut down his body. A staffer rushed to give him an opioid antidote and stood over him while it took effect.
"I saw his face and how worried he was, it was the first time in a long time that I felt like somebody cared about me," Garrett says.
"I wouldn't be here if it weren't for them."
The 35-year-old weeps as he speaks about the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre, which houses the supervised consumption site he uses. It is one of 10 such sites slated for closure after the province announced new rules.
Health Minister Sylvia Jones recently outlined a fundamental shift in the province's approach to the overdose crisis. Ontario will shutter the 10 sites because they're too close to schools and daycares, and the government will prohibit any new ones from opening as it moves to an abstinence-based treatment model. Seven existing consumption sites will remain open.
Jones has denied that the changes would lead to harm, saying "people are not going to die. They are going to get access to treatment."
But health workers, advocates and those who use the sites say the closures could prove deadly for those with opioid addictions.
Garrett is terrified.
"These people mean the world to me," he says of staffers at the site he uses. "I'm very alone, but when I come here, I'm not alone anymore."
The Canadian Press spoke to several people who use supervised consumption sites. Fear, anxiety and confusion dominated those discussions.
For Garrett, using the consumption site has allowed him to trust the health-care workers there, and that has led him to use other services offered at the community centre.
Staffers have even taken him to hospital — in one instance it was because they noticed signs of sepsis that eventually required two weeks of care.
"I guess I'll end up in a park," Garrett says of where he'll use drugs in the future.
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