From fentanyl to freedom: Victoria mom shares personal experience with harm reduction

A Vancouver Island mother shares how B.C.’s drug treatments and harm reduction support saved her life.

Few people have the courage to speak publicly about their personal challenges, and even fewer still when those challenges involve one of the mostly hotly politicized issues in Canada.

But that’s a driving force behind Olivia Smith’s decision to speak out about the drug use that derailed her life and saw her lose custody of her children before powering through relapses and adversity to regain her sobriety and get her life back on track.

“Without harm reduction, my kids would not have a mom today,” the Victoria mother told CTV News in a one-on-one interview.

“If Narcan wasn’t available, if Insite, if overdose prevention sites weren’t there, and I wasn’t safe when I had relapsed those times, my kids wouldn’t have a mom.”

Smith started drinking as a teen in Nanaimo before moving on to meth and cocaine, going to detox for the first time when she was just 17. She got clean and had two kids, but when they were still young she had gotten hooked on fentanyl and lost custody.

“I just couldn’t stop, (it was) like I had lost the power of choice,” she said. “I would be crying on the streets just wishing I could be with them.”

Relapse challenges

At this point, Smith went to an in-patient drug rehab program and got clean. She was able to regain custody of her children and moved to the Vancouver area. But within a couple years, she was going to Vancouver’s downtown east side to buy fentanyl.

Ashamed and simultaneously terrified of losing custody of her children, she didn’t tell anyone she’d fallen into old habits and ended up overdosing multiple times.

“I’d had such a horrific bottom already,” she said.

“I knew I was either going to die or my kids were going to grow up without a mom or I was just going to be engulfed in that lifestyle, so I had to (do something).”

In a moment of clarity, she walked into Connection Point where Guy Felicella – a now-prominent harm reduction advocate – was on his own road to recovery from drug addiction.

With compassion and support, Smith says she connected with a doctor who prescribed her a supervised opioid substitute, Suboxone, which stabilized her and ultimately led to her getting an education and job.

“I’m so grateful that it worked out the way it did and that I had the support when I needed it,” she said.

Harm reduction highly politicized

During the fall’s provincial election campaign, the BC Conservatives campaigned on a plan to shut down supervised consumption sites if elected, slamming harm reduction as an “abject failure”. On the federal level, the Conservative leader has denounced those clinics at “drug dens” that have “made everything worse.”

The statistics and lived experience of many British Columbians suggest otherwise.

Medical practitioners, researchers, coroners, and even police chiefs have supported the concept that pharmaceutical-quality drugs be prescribed to illicit drug users to avoid the highly unpredictable and toxic drug supply, access to consumption facilities with trained personnel on hand to reverse overdoses, while offering access to drug treatment programs for those ready to tackle their addiction.

But the botched implementation of a provincial pilot program to decriminalize personal possession of illicit drugs led to public drug use near playgrounds and in public places that saw street disorder and clashes with drug users, leading to a rollback of that policy and tarnishing harm reduction efforts in general.

The diversion of prescribed opioid substitutes also led to a requirement that their consumption be supervised, even though senior police officials described it as a low priority.

What harm reduction advocates and opponents both agree on is the need for more treatment beds. Even though the government continues to add to the number of funded beds, progress is slow and a shortage of healthcare workers suggests that even a surge in funding would do little on the ground.

Smith isn’t political herself, but has strong feelings about the idea of eliminating harm reduction programs and easier access to treatment programs – and compassion for relapses – when others have that moment of clarity.

“Honestly, like, I get pretty emotional when I think about it because I can’t even believe that human life is being debated,” she said.

“(Addiction is) pain and suffering and torment and torture every day.”

The 35-year-old mother regularly speaks with her tweens and their friends, making it a priority for them to be someone they can turn to if they find themselves struggling with drugs or other life challenges.