Not Much Left To Lose But Life

"It's one crisis too many for everybody. Homelessness is at its absolute worst. Then we have this vile opioid crisis. Then we have to get a pandemic?"

"You have to wonder what's next. You can't imagine it can get any worse. Then it does."

"When you talk about supplying opioids to people with an addiction, people can get all bent out of shape and say, ‘You should have an abstinent life.’ But the reality is in this kind of pandemic all of us are just trying to survive. I do feel that there’s an understanding that people have to do what they have to do to get through the day."
"All of us are struggling these days."

Wendy Muckle, executive director, Ottawa Inner City Health

Mark Barnes serves those with addiction. Jean Levac / Postmedia News

"They have more time on their hands. Time is dangerous to a person with opioid use disorder. Time leads to boredom and boredom leads to drug use. It gives them time to stew about their financial problems, their mental problems and why they use opioids in the first place. Addiction is not a character flaw. It's a true mental health disorder."

"There's an increased drug use risk and overdose potential because of the isolation, depression, anxiety due to COVID-19 and the lack of illicit-drug supply. Now they're going to try experimenting with anything they can get their hands on to turn off that brain. It's terrifying."

"Not only has the panhandling market dried up, many restaurants that have fed the homeless have now closed. Bathrooms are locked and parks are a no-go zone. On top of this, the street drug supply is drying up."

"It's harder to get drugs right now. Some advocates for abstinence think this is a positive thing. This is not a positive thing. This will lead to violence It will lead to crime. It will lead to other problems. Now there's even more of a need for a compassionate way to treat addiction disorder."

Pharmacist Mark Barnes, Respect RX, Vanier

At a time when the broader Canadian society has been stricken with a new reality of unemployment, lost wages, fragile finances, a government trying to convince then coerce people to remain indoors to practise social distancing, to leave home only when absolutely necessary, advocates for the homeless, the drug-addicted and those whose frail mental and physical condition makes them ideal candidates for the freakily communicable COVID-19 appeal for help to an audience focused on their own travail.

The homeless have been forced by the promulgation of orders to clear away from city parks as authorities frantically enact bylaws to compel people to create a physical distance between themselves and others. The homeless spend their days in such parks normally. But this new reality is as far from normal as is conceivable. Normal is where the homeless ask for 'spare change' from passing strangers and occasionally are rewarded for their persistence. They are able to accrue the cash to buy their illicit drugs.

These are not normal times; drugs that would ordinarily be available to feed the need of the addicted are now in short supply. Even while social distancing has also meant that the homeless addicted now also attempt to keep a distance from one another and the end result is loneliness to add to their despair. Being alone means that if someone inadvertently overdoses there is no one beside them to help. Among the multitude of homeless addicts a handful have been selected to take part in a pilot project.

Wendy Muckle of Ottawa Inner City Health. Jean Levac/Postmedia News

"Those most likely to die" are given access to prescription opioids through the provincial drug program. Just a few months into its inception, the safer-drug program focuses on those whom existing services haven't touched. "We're pushing hard on the safer-supply agenda. The illicit-drug supply, which has always been toxic and unstable is even more unstable in the midst of the pandemic", explained Wendy Muckle.

Homeless shelters have faced an immense burden in their efforts to accommodate the homeless, and now food scarcity is also looming as a problem for the unhoused and addicted. What in all likelihood strikes fear into the consciousness of the homeless addicted, however, is not the restrictions on their movement, the growing scarcity of places where they can gather, the growing lack of places offering them food and the disappearance of the source of their begging-cup, but the supply drying up of the street drugs their lifestyle depends upon.

Currently in Ottawa there are approximately 860 individuals living in the community shelter system along with about 90 people living on the streets, according to the city's community and social services department. (Jean Delisle/CBC)