The "Drug Crisis" & Why We Are the Ones Who Need to Change

I am writing this as a person in recovery from drug and alcohol use: I practice abstinence of drugs and alcohol. I have peer supported hundreds of people who are also seeking abstinence, people who are not seeking abstinence and everything in between. My journey with this began in 2011, making this 14 years of lived experience and intensive work. Check out my first post "is it 'mental illness' or am i just acutely aware of the reality of this world".

Note that I put the phrase "drug crisis" in quotations to refer to the fact that drug related deaths are at approximately 22 people per day in so-called Canada as of 2024. However, the mainstream narrative is that this is an issue that is being addressed, while my opinion is that this is a REQUIREMENT of systemic oppression. Systems of oppression REQUIRE there to be people who are scapegoats, who they can incarcerate, imprison, and generally oppress as this keeps the rest of society in line. It is a part of genocide. We know that drugs are profitable for those with power, whether they are illegal or legal. While it is a "drug crisis" it is first and foremost an intentional plan that is operating exactly as it is meant to be, sacrificing our communities for the sake of Empire.

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I am so sick of all of us saying we don't know what to do for people who use drugs. We know what to do for people who use drugs. But we won't change our lives for them. We make them change for us.

I am so sick of us focusing and fixating on the person who uses drugs as though they are the thing that needs to change. We never pause to think about how we are the ones that need to change.

The "drug crisis" is rooted in the fact that colonialism has ripped us from our relationship to each other, our relationship to the land, our connection to the rhythms of life. We use drugs to cope, to soothe, to deal with this split in our inherent longing, the chasm that separates us from our humanity. With this loss of humanity we refuse to see people who use drugs as human, they become disposable.

This is not a problem that only people who use drugs suffer from. But we think the problem is only in the people who use drugs. "It" is simply manifesting itself in all of us differently.

From my friend Taylor's Post the War on Drugs:

In 1923, Canada was one of the first countries to make smoking pot illegal. Cannabis advocates have long blamed women's rights "activist" Emily Murphy for the criminalization of cannabis in Canada. Her 1922 book on the drug trade in Canada, The Black Candle, claimed that marijuana users "become raving maniacs" and "are liable to kill or indulge in any sort of violence."

In the early 1920s, Emily Murphy, member of the 'Famous Five', travelled extensively throughout western Canada speaking about the purity of the British race. Murphy was also a vocal supporter eugenic practices in the form of selective breeding and state sexual sterilization, which she believed would solve social problems including alcoholism, drug use, and "crime." At the time, the panic over drug use in Canada had much to do with the drive to ban Chinese immigrants from entering the country. Drug crusaders like Emily Murphy blamed Chinese opium sellers for leading Canadian youth to ruin. In a series of articles in Maclean's in 1920, Murphy warned that "drug-addled young women" would give in to the sexual demands of Chinese men, leading to the birth of "mixed-race" babies.

I'm so sick of the judgement: why do people who use drugs "illegally" get treated as a problem when people drink all the time or smoke cannabis and it is cool?

...alcohol and cannabis are substances that are available readily and in safe supply, where you can order it to your door, walk into a shop of your choice, and purchase it the way you want. (See Taylor’s post on the legalization of cannabis) We are not demonizing a person’s right to have joy, to have release, ease, comfort, or to let loose. In fact, we are defending it. We are defending the right of EVERY person to have this. Regardless of which substance it is.

-Written by me for Stop the Stack Patreon

So when a person becomes a problem to us, what is our focus? Get them help, regardless of whether they are asking for it or not. Why aren't we asking ourselves about how we contribute to the problem? We send them to treatment to change their behaviours: what about us and our behaviours? We send them to counselling: what about our inner work? Not that we "caused" it. But how are we contributing to the systemic oppression that causes the "drug crisis"?

The problem is not people who use drugs: it is our reaction to them. They are doing the only normal and accurate thing in a world that is literally built on violence, oppression and the perpetuating of injustice. They are just trying to survive, or they are just trying to soothe their pain, or make it through an intolerable situation. Sometimes the intolerable situation is their own sadness, trauma and deep (often justified) fear. It can be a vicious cycle, where people who used drugs don't want to be fully honest because of the dripping in judgement reaction they get, and those around them reacting with an impulse to "help" which is actually control. Until those of us around people who use drugs STOP trying to get them to STOP, the cycle continues.

For many people, they can turn off their minds, they've trained themselves to do so, they've been brainwashed, they have enough privilege that it is possible. For others, the pain is so deep, the trauma so great, that it is not possible to live without using drugs. Or, maybe we just like the way it feels to use drugs. Whatever it is, who are we to judge them? How dare we make their choices about us.

People have to understand that the decision for recovery and what that looks like has to come from the person, we cannot be forcing anyone into anything. Not only will it backfire and possibly put the person in greater danger, but it assumes we know what is best for them, and that is not the case. Who are we to say how much or in what way a person uses substances when we uphold and benefit from this world that demands the degradation of their humanity? If we cannot find our humanity, people will continue to die, we will continue to put them to death for simply needing a release from the horrors of what we’ve created. The methods that treatment centres are using are abominable, they are not a solution. Those that make it through these kinds of programs and praise them tend to be people with greater privilege, and they tend to be closed minded to anything else working for people, contributing to the ongoing cycle of harm within these rather insular communities.

-Written by me for Stop the Stack Patreon

What if we actually changed the world so that people didn't have to use drugs the way they do? I believe that is possible.

What if when someone we care about is using drugs in a way that affects their ability to earn money, is endangering their health, we just supported them how THEY want? What if we didn't attach ourselves to a desired outcome, and just loved them as they are in that moment? What if we changed our selves, and our lives, challenging our ideas of "safety", "security", and "morality"?

What if we checked our saviorism and saneism at the door, and simply asked people who use drugs what they need, doing that, and only that?

What if we stopped viewing "psychosis" as something to be feared, and set up supports so that when when someone experiences altered states, they can be supported as they would in a plant medicine or ayahuasca ceremony or dealing with the side affects of pharmaceutical drugs?

What if we stopped shaming people for wanting to die? Who are we to say that anyone should continue being in this realm if they don't want to be? Can we not hold that both can be true: that a person can want to live but also see the merit in leaving this reality? How fucking arrogant are we?

What if when a crisis is "escalated", we started by de-escalating OURSELVES, and looking inward at what is coming up for us? What judgements, biases, fears? Where do these come from?

And if all of these things are completely outside of our personal skill set, what if we reached out to people and looked for people who had those skill sets?

We are forced to endure a society that is deeply out of balance with our needs as humans. This will manifest inside of our individual bodies, but it doesn’t mean the problem is individual.

...Many of us do not even have language to understand what a crisis is for us beyond “not able to keep up anymore.” We need to start building a relationship with our bodyminds and nervous systems especially, in order to understand what we’re like when we’re feeling safe, nourished and resourced; and what we’re like when our dignity, safety, and sense of belonging (Staci Hines, The Politics of Trauma) has been compromised. How does stress actually show up for us? Where does it hide in our bodies? What muscles have been clenched for years?

This is the important inventory to be taking, rather than only knowing things are wrong when we can no longer work well enough, produce enough, focus, or fulfill the many other responsibilities we have as humans.

...Are you scared or uncomfortable while supporting someone in a mental health crisis? That means you’re likely in a situation that you don’t necessarily have the tools for and your comfort zone is expanding — it doesn’t inherently mean you’re unsafe.

Many of us have learned to connect ideas of safety with how good or regulated our nervous system feels. Safety is not the same as a regulated nervous system — especially if you are white or move through this world with racial and class privilege/power. Your ability to feel good, to feel calm, is not what dictates standards of safety.

...We don’t get to automatically decide as onlookers that people who are saying things we don’t understand are manic or psychotic.

-From Visions for a Liberated Anti-Carceral Response

Something I see a lot of is people who have no lived experience centering their ideas of what someone who uses drugs should or shouldn't do. I do think it is possible for a person who doesn't have lived experience to gain understanding and to approach in a way that is supportive, BUT I think usually they can be so clouded by their own judgements and ideas that they only see what they think is right or what they want. This is parallel to the idea that a person with privilege can never understand fully what it is to not have that privilege. They can work to be "safer" for people without that privilege, but they will never be fully safe.

I also see a lot of people who DO have the lived experience of using drugs, who have made a big shift in the way they do that, whether that is through abstinence or not or something in between, who view people where they USED TO BE as less than. They treat them as though it is an individual problem, that they pulled themselves out of it, and others should be able to as well. This is parallel to when people who are marginalized find success within oppressive systems by adhering to oppressive system's rules, and preach about how others can pull themselves up from the their bootstraps as well.

Another situation I see occurring is that people have so internalized shame of their loved one who uses drugs, that they've deluded themselves into not seeing the accuracy of things. They "protect" their loved one from anyone that threatens their delusion, even if people are simply aiming to support the person who uses drugs. They coddle and treat the person who uses drugs as they would someone with a disability or a child (which is ableist and ageist). What I know as a person with lived experience is that it is only up to the person who uses drugs if and when they want to stop or moderate. People around them will often act as if "it was just a one time thing" or that their loved one couldn't possibly be "as bad as those other people". This is internalized bias and shame. What they don't realize is that in denying the accuracy of the situation, they are denying who their loved one is in this exact moment, they are judging and attaching morality to the person's drug use. This inaccuracy means that there is not a foundation for support: until we can see a person fully where they are, and not be wishing them to be different, we cannot support them, we are pushing our own will onto them.

Here is the thing: when someone close to us is using drugs in a way that affecting their day to day in drastic ways, endangering their health and their security (and this is of course subjective dependent on our privilege), it can be terrifying. It can be difficult. It may be actually affecting our security too if we are tied to them financially. We may not know where they are, it may be impossible to rely on them, they may have changed from the way we once knew them. But it doesn't have to be that way. There are solutions, there are people in communities who have navigated this, who can help us navigate it so that we are centering the person using drugs and their needs but ALSO helping us to live our lives the best we can. We all get to make aligned, authentic, informed choices, as human beings with inherent value and dignity.

I cannot stress enough how much true community and connection is the key to our collective liberation, including how we support people who use drugs in real tangible ways. If we really want to end the "drug crisis" we need to get vulnerable, talk about our shame, and find people to build relationships with where there is mutual support. There are plenty of people suffering and trying to navigate situations that those in power don't want us to surmount. Elite power holders profit off of keeping people down, keeping people using drugs, houseless, without their basic needs, while also maintaining the working class and middle class separate from those that are imprisoned or street involved. Those of us with privilege need to find ways to build real relationships with people more marginalized than us if we want to see change.

This problem is bigger than one person, and it is affecting those most marginalized: Indigenous to so-called Canada and Black people are disproportionately affected by the "drug crisis", incarceration and criminalization related to drugs. We need to be looking at this from an intersectional lens, getting out of our tunnel vision, and seeing the bigger picture.

I see a world where we are free, truly liberated from the systems that oppress us all. I see the possibility and I believe in it with all my heart, but we have to work together, we have to connect the dots and do the work to change ourselves. We are not alone.