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How Buying My Drugs Online Has Been Working for Me
A reliable supply of drugs can save lives. That’s exactly why harm reductionists are pushing for widely accessible, regulated safe supplythroughout Canada and beyond. Until we get that, finding trusted unregulated vendors is the best we can do. We drug users need to share information about sources as much as possible to help each other through this ongoing crisis of drug poisoning deaths.
Deadly fentanyl overdoses could rise in Halifax during the pandemic
When Halifax police warned the public in June about a potentially deadly type of fentanyl on the street that looks like sidewalk chalk, they didn't mention they were looking to pin Tyrone Zammit's overdose death in a Bedford motel room on someone else.
Overdose Awareness Day: Drug Users Are Aware—What About Governments?
“The government needs to be made aware—in flesh-and-blood terms, not statistics—that every day, their citizens are dying from a tainted drug supply. Every day, people who use drugs must play Russian roulette with chemicals. Every day, they have to break the law, running all the risks to life and liberty that entails, to procure and consume a substance on which they may be dependent.”
Canadian Drug Users Need Us Doctors to Step Up With Safe Supply
“The tennis player Arthur Ashe once said that to take on a challenge, “start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.” In the face of Canada’s national crisis of illicit drug poisoning, physicians and nurse practitioners who care for people who use drugs could consider Ashe’s advice.”
Safe Consumption Means Safe Inhalation, Too: An All-Inclusive Model
“As a former crack cocaine user, I’ve been on both ends of sharing a glass stem. I know how people experiencing stimulant dependency may be more inclined to take risks, like sharing pipes or having unprotected sex. So I’ve been excited to learn more about a project in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan’s largest city, that includes a center for safely smoking substances.”
Methadose: A Parable of Putting Profit Before Human Lives
“I have been on both compounded methadone, which is “regular” methadone (or Metadol-D), and Methadose, and I can say first-hand that Methadose is far less effective. The half-life is 12-14 hours instead of 24-36; you still have aches and pains in your legs, you wake up sick and so then you use. Sometimes to use is to die.”
Canada Is So Close to Decriminalizing Drugs: Let’s Make It Happen
“The decriminalization movement has been propelled by new collective understandings of the racist, costly and deadly failings of the criminal justice system. As calls to defund or abolish the police grow, it is inevitable that police will ultimately have to stand down from the drug war. It’s just a matter of how.”
How we can help keep people who use drugs alive during COVID-19
“As someone who uses drugs and very recently experienced an overdose, I know how important it is to not use alone. In July, I was saved by two people who administered naloxone and performed CPR, including rescue breathing until paramedics responded. Like my overdose, most overdoses are accidental and most are preventable.”
As a Fentanyl User, I Know How Much We Need a Safe Supply
“The odor of burning vinegar associated with the transdermal fentanyl patch will probably always be one of my favourite smells. To get the fentanyl from the patch, you need to do a chemical abstraction. Vinegar is not the safest method but I always found it the most effective.”
Why I Overdosed During the Pandemic, and Why I Survived
“Luckily, I was using around other people. After years of absorbing harm reduction messaging, I didn’t use alone, even though I was intoxicated and could easily have made that decision. Thankfully, I didn’t save the fentanyl for when I got home and went to sleep. That’s what I normally would do.”
‘MDMA likely laced with fentanyl leads to overdose and death in Halifax’
The city of Halifax mourns this week after the fatal overdose of 15-year-old Miya Harris.
It’s believed Harris’ overdose was caused by MDMA (AKA Molly) laced with fentanyl—two drugs that should never go together.
Harris’ death was preventable: the downstream result of the criminalization of drugs which leads to increased uncertainty of the current drug market which has seen a rise in toxic and deadly drugs being cut into traditionally safer drugs like Molly.
Nova Scotians are still dying from the overdose crisis
Just as Nova Scotia tries its best to contain COVID, and Canada’s largest mass killing in recent history leaves 22 people dead from an unimaginable act of violence, there are other tragedies that have been swept under the rug amid the chaos.