Opioid Tragedy: Inside the Fentanyl Crisis | Ten Dollar Death Trip | ENDEVR Documentary

very seriously, I try not to do it, but do you know that it hurts? I worked for many many years, pay my own way and collect bottles every day. I average 10 to 15 a day, if today you win 15, let's say. How would you spend it? 10 of them would probably go to drugs. Fentanyl, yes, sad but true. Yes, and why do you do it. What does

fentanyl

feel like when you take it? Just a big hug. It's yes, just a warm place and nothing can hurt you. Homelessness and addiction have done real damage here, but community life is vibrant and humanity abundant, and in an area of ​​so much poisoning a sobering thought arises: how many of these people wouldn't be here if it weren't for naloxone while Night falls in the injection shop. opens its doors and the first of the campers arrives.

The governments here in Canada support the use of spaces where people can consume drugs under supervision and many of those that start as legal pop-ups like this one become sanctioned around the world there. more than 100 such centers, more than 30 of them are in Canada and there has never been an overdose

death

in any of them. Rise and shine, this is breakfast with the beautiful sea of ​​holly and the lovely Jamie Bell with until nine from officially the best city in the world. to live, that's right, number one friends, and that's an amazing fishmonger hashtag, so, my beautiful Vancouverites, it's another beautiful crisp. tomorrow and it's Friday and this morning's show is going to be yes, the phone lines are open and today we ask what can be done about this pesky

opioid

crisis

, plus it's time for you guys to go head to head over another round of fish or sausage, but first from the news desk he's the navigator, well, you take the dough, whatever you've done right you put it in your little pot and you put some water in it and you take your syringe and it's like a filter yeah some people use a filter some it's not right nothing's going to fit and through of the syringe it's not going to go in there yet anyway so you go for a vein yeah how does it feel? uh uh cool that's why I do it you know drugs are uh really what you think about this man there are addicts that work and there are addicts that don't work you know there are people that like to do drugs until they ruin them and then they die and that's it, you know, there's another statistic, where are you?

I'm headed to Ronnie now, I'm going to the mall. I'm going to go rob so I can get some money and keep my habit because that's what you have to do these days, man, I'm already feeling up to it because there's a 4.25 take. I just did it and it wore off, it was just a couple of minutes ago, yeah, yeah, you know, if I don't go to jail for trying to do it, maybe I'll get paid and get more drugs, but it's not fun. man I hate it I don't think I can take it dude I've spent like 10 years of my life behind bars for what drug addiction something that kills me like I know what I'm doing and I know it's bad for me , but as you know, we all have our problems and I'm just trying to deal with them, man, what has

fentanyl

done to your life?

My life has been absolutely dragged through the mud. I have lost friends. I have lost family members. nothing I live on the street I freeze almost every night and steal to eat and support I hate my life I hate it I wake up in the morning wishing I hadn't done it that's drug use

opioid

s energy stroke used I forgot to feel terrible I would I wouldn't wish him this first. I wouldn't wish the person I hate the most in the world to live like this. It's not living, man, it's dying like you're sinking into the ground every day and you're doing it voluntarily.

Because? Because you are too afraid. being high or getting off drugs no, it's because it's uh when you've done something for so long that's all you know, man, all I know is jail, crime and drugs, that's all I know, I'm lost, it sucks , not five- year old son man doesn't know who his father is some people say people who use drugs have a choice you are not choosing this is you you don't have to do it I am not choosing this man I did well I had I made a choice and I made the wrong one and this is what I'm faced with now Do you have hope for the future?

Sometimes I don't know how far my future will go. He could be dead within 20 minutes. Who knows? Thanks to chaos. What you see that are on the streets is only partly due to the drugs that people take, it has more to do with what they have to do to get money to keep the economy going and whether it's sex work or car theft, We could fix that. The current

crisis

is because people are using poisonous drugs and I'm at a point where we really need to think seriously about giving people a safer supply of opioids. I'm right in the heart of one of the hardest hit downtown streets on the east side.

The center is looking to do exactly that, so we are going to the Crosstown clinic. What happens in Crosstalk? So we provide injectable hydromorphone and injectable diacetyl morphine to clients with severe opioid use disorder and what is diacetyl is pharmaceutically manufactured heroin. let's go in, come in, that's right, it's a medical center that gives heroin to addicted people, that door should be closed here we go, so come in so that the clients are here for the nurses to do a pre-assessment, sorry ladies, come in In this room, you come up to this window and give your name, your date of birth, and the nurse will provide you or hand you your syringe.

Can you hand me a syringe? Thank you so you can see here that we received this. It's the dosage, so it'll tell us the client's name and then the drug they're taking, what are you taking there? Dave, heroin, I see morphine and how often you take it three times a day and this is my lunchtime dose. It's another downtown eastside drug deal, but instead of a toxic drug sold in an alley and injected behind a dumpster, it's a regulated pharmaceutical administered in a medical setting and supervised by people who care. I'm putting heroin in my body now, now it's in our chihuahua it makes me itch everywhere like a bad itch, I have to turn red and you know it itches a lot, but my uh um, my desire for heroin is satisfied because, wow, It was good to prescribe heroin to people as a treatment for addiction, it's a challenging concept. but the evidence is compelling, switzerland opened a similar center in 1994 and since they have seen huge reductions in overdose

death

s, hiv rates and drug related crime, the theory goes that when you take people out of a life of street drugs, they have the opportunity to introduce routines and make gradual changes in life when people start with us they use illicit drugs every day and within six months of being in our care that is reduced to a few days a month when people They reconnect with families, they go back to school and start working, they start working part-time, they start volunteering, they get housing, but most importantly, my most recidivist patient had been in and out of jail more. 200 times before coming to receive treatment here and since receiving treatment here he has not returned to prison. a great success how many banks have you robbed?

Oh, I'm in the banks. I stole lots from more than 60 banks. I served a prison sentence of 22 years, two months and two days. It costs 27,000 a year to supply heroin to a patient here and it is funded. It's not cheap, the government says, but independent research suggests the service saves taxpayers twice as much as reducing ambulance calls, and in the midst of a fentanyl crisis, there's an additional savings that's harder to quantify: the cost. of human lives that we have not lost. any of our clients to overdose on fentanyl because coming here avoids all that. Are you still robbing banks?

No, no, I am very grateful to say that I am a retired bank robber. I don't need to do it anymore. Our time in Vancouver was up and the small downtown east neighborhood disappeared in the rearview mirror the opioid crisis here in North America is out of control claiming a life every seven minutes and seeing it up close and personal has been heartbreaking coming home means escaping of him, but for how long I listened to myself, we always watched the action. You know, we're so focused on substance that we've actually forgotten the value of human life and that's just tragic, but yeah, at the same time, these people are beautiful.

However, I am hopeful and so it is. mighty, I don't remember the rest, sorry guys, if you could go back to the day you first put that needle in your arm, would you absolutely do it again the day I put that first needle in my arm? Wow, but it took every day. from yesterday to bring the man you see here today and the man you see I'm a good man and I'm happy with who I am I still love this woman huh people don't realize it's just a paycheck if I make 300

dollar

s tonight 50

dollar

s I keep it I keep it I've been doing this for four years another year of this I'll go here with 150 thousand dollars no Look back, you have to stand your ground, how to keep your chin up and you have to keep going, because if you don't You do it, you will end up being a statistic.

I'm marking a book, man, like you're one of those people who died.