TORONTO — 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."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.The 35-year-old weeps as he speaks about the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre , which houses the supervised consumption site he uses.
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. Now on methadone, she's received training to help others and walks the streets armed with an overdose-reversing naloxone kit.She struggles to find words about the looming changes and worries about relapsing herself.
Baird-Gendlin used to shoot heroin but that drug has largely disappeared from the streets, she says, because of the ubiquity of fentanyl. The 46-year-old says he still sees his partner and the kids weekly, but won't return until he is sober."My mom was actually the first person I used with," he says. "My grandmother warned me not to get in touch with my mom because my life would turn out like hers and it totally has."
Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre Supervised Consumption Site Jeanne Hamilton The Canadian Press Sylvia Jones Consumption
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