Chapter Five: Humanizing Users
Lesson One: Life and Struggles of an Active Drug User
CBC, 2017: Toronto Youth Documents His Life of Homelessness and Addiction | Red button
-
Unfortunately, Rabbit died in 2019 due to an opioid overdose. His story reveals how he - like many others, used drugs to cope, which resulted in him falling into addiction and ending up on the street.
-
His experiences also show the pull addiction has on an individual and the cycle that exists that keeps people from recovering.
-
Meet Rabbit
Meet Karla
Invisible People, 2018: Toronto Homeless Woman Trying to Kick Her Heroin Addiction
-
Karla, although an active addict and woman experiencing homelessness, she remains positive about her ability to recover and get her life back. She reveals the systemic inefficiencies and failures that resulted in her situation and the struggles of living on the street.
Reflective Questions:
-
How did you feel hearing about their personal experiences? Put yourself in their shoes, how would you feel and what would you do?
-
How do you think society's perceptions of drug users influence an addict's ability to recover?
Why is it important to hear the voices of drug users?
As you can see, this video shows how stigma against drug users have real consequences, ones that seek to keep them addicted and on the street. Based on what we have learned in previous chapters, we know this stigma is a result of racist, classist, and misguided drug policy that only aims to criminalize those with active addictions. This mark of stigma eventually pushes addicts into a marginalized position, one that risks dehumanizing an individual to the point where they no longer have a voice, creating what some sociologists call the subaltern (Fuzzy Theory, 2019)
Sociological Term Breakdown: Subaltern
Traditionally, this is a post-colonial theory made to represent the experiences of a marginalized individuals and highlights how power is inaccessible to socially isolated groups, such as drug users. In many circumstances due to the systemic biases caused by stigma, they do not have the power to change their situation. This highlights the importance of giving platforms and a voice to those traditionally powerless and ignored in society. However, finding the voice of the subaltern is difficult because translating and communicating their experiences wants and needs in a way that is palatable to society is difficult (Fuzzy Theory, 2019). However, we must not romanticize or minimize the hardship addicts face otherwise we fail to meet their needs and will not decrease overdose deaths. It is crucial to listen to their personal experiences, rather than relying on common misguided generalizations.
Lesson Two: Recovered Addicts as Artists and Activists
Before the recognition from Toronto Public Health that we are in the midst of a drug crisis, there were limited resources that recognized or supported the needs of active users. In response, recovered individuals, active users, and volunteers were forced to create their own care webs. These are models of solidarity, where people show up for each other out of compassion, respect, and mutual aid - not charity (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018). Many of these people become activists due to their lived experience as drug users, meaning their activist work is not necessarily grounded in academia. Art is a unique, personal, and meaningful tool that makes education on the drug crisis accessible to a wider range of demographics and should not be discredited. This type of action is foundational for abolition, a concept explored in an earlier chapter.
Les Harper
Les uses an arts-based practice to guide his counseling and community work. Les’s work in the health and social service sector has focused on Indigenous Harm Reduction. He has also served as a community leader in grief and healing supports for individuals affected by the intersecting crises of failed drug policy, violent incarceration systems, and ongoing colonization.
Currently he is a worker at South Riverdale Community Health Centre (SRCHC) in Toronto.
Harper is also the founder of Wish You Were Here, Wish Here Was Better (WYWH, WHWB), a mobile public event series that makes space for people impacted by the ongoing overdose crisis—and the systemic issues of precarity, houselessness, and criminalization. This event show cased art, and dance, and offered a feast to mourn, while providing opportunities to imagine and work towards a more just future.
Photo Gallery from 'Wish You Were Here, Wish Here Was Better'
Harper alongside community members works to paint murals around Toronto, so far they've painted about ten. He says it’s important to bring people together to create art, whether they’re from community centres, housing co-ops, or safe injection sites. It is the only mural in Ontario that looks at the overdose crisis from an Indigenous perspective (Keogh, 2019).
Jeff Bierk
Bierk is a Tornoto-based photographer, but also a former opioid user. He says he lost most of his teens and twenties to an OxyContin addiction. Jeff uses photography to document and humanize communities directly impacted by the terrifying surge in overdose deaths.
He is best known for intimate and honest photos of his friends and other people he knows struggling with drug addiction and housing. The goal behind these photos is to challenge the quick label and assumption of these people as addicts, homeless, or undesirable. Bierk sees beauty because he sees his friends and together they are collaborators - not photographer and subject. He calls these photo sets “The Art of Empathy” and hopes to inspire more people to see those struggling with addiction more compassionately. Bierk uses art as activism to humanize drug users because he knows how it feels to be looked down on by society.
The Art of Empathy
 |  |  |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |
Congratulations! You've finished our course!
We hope you found this helpful!
If you're interested in furthering your knowledge on the Toronto drug crisis, harm reduction, safe injection sites, or safe supply please proceed to the resource page. if you're interested in seeing where we sourced our information, please proceed to the reference page.