Bullshit about Needles

The “It could always be worse” for most of us loved ones whose children suffer from drug addiction is usually intravenous drug use, “At least they’re not using needles…” as if popping pills and snorting cocaine weren’t bad enough! IV drug use…. something I thought I would never have to face as a parent and something I believed was very rare in our “safe little community”. I believed this even though a friend who worked at the Aids Committee of NL told me fifteen years ago that Gander was the community they sent the most safe works to outside of the St. John’s area.

The first IV drug user I am aware of meeting in Gander was a client about ten years ago. I remember him telling me his story of how powerful the high was, after getting out of jail for almost two years, he was pissed with himself because it took less than 48 hours for him to go back to the one house in his small community where he knew he could get his fix and his works to use. He said there was no thinking about it at all as he left his house that day and just walked straight there, something in his head took over and his legs lead him where his brain needed him to go. The day I met him he was homeless and trying to explain why his family kicked him out when a few days before they confirmed he could live with them after his release. At first, I thought he was bullshitting, trying to sound tough, trying to shock the government worker he was talking to, trying to prove why he needed help with another accommodation arrangement so quick etc etc.

The next, a young single mother, again a client and again, I thought she was bullshitting me. She was known for outlandish stories, trying to convince us she was in more trouble than she was and definitely looking to shock us at times. She exaggerated, suffered from paranoia and was irrational on the best of days, so when, on a bad day, she ranted about not being able to stop pricking herself it took me a minute to figure out what she meant by pricking. She did show me some faint track marks but again I still didn’t fully believe her.

Back then these two stories were so far removed from my life experience I didn’t believe it could be true. I got to know both these clients fairly well after first learning of their IV drug use over ten years ago….and obviously, they were not bullshitting. Why would anyone make that up about themselves? Why would anyone want to be associated with that behavior? I shake my head at how naive I was back then.

A few years after this I met my third IV drug user, by this time my eyes were open more and Chris’ addiction had progressed but not to needle use. This young man talked openly about shooting morphine and was desperately trying to stop. He was Christopher’s roommate in hospital at the time; it was the third time in a year he was hospitalized for his addiction. He was a healthy-looking young man with a fulltime job working in a construction trade doing turn arounds and staying at home when he would return. He lived with his widowed Mom and Grandmother and was their “man of the house”, so he said. They didn’t want him to move out, they knew what he was doing, they begged him to stop, they forced him out of bed when he was home on turn around because they needed things done, they checked on him at night, helped him get safe works, fed him and continued to love him unconditionally. He said when he started going away to work, he wanted to buy his own house but he felt an obligation to his two “mothers” who were widowed and he always helped. He told me at that time, he believes if he had bought a house back then he is certain he would have died of an overdose long ago. He credits his mom and grandmother for keeping him alive and getting him to help when he needs it.

The first time there was a sign of needles in my life was when my mother found syringes in Christopher‘s sock drawer wrapped up in a sock, he said he was holding them for a friend. I put them on top of the fridge in a basket and never really thought about it again… it was so unbelievable to think he was injecting drugs into his veins that I never really gave it a lot of thought. Even though I had some exposure and he had already been to rehab for his addiction to cocaine and pills, as a mother, I was in denial. A few short months after the sock drawer incident I caught him, home alone, in his room, as I entered, he hid something under his pillow… it was a loaded syringe. He said “Mom why are you so shocked, you knew I was at the needles, Nan gave you the ones she found in my sock drawer.” That was probably about five years ago…. today we know he was injecting a lot of drugs into his veins and I am assuming it started before mom found the syringes in the sock! We know he wasn’t holding them for a friend. We know he was using IV drugs daily for a while, he’s had multiple infections, has permanent scarring all over his body, been hospitalized for complications, lost half his thumb and his most recent medical trauma due to IV drug use lead to seven months in hospital and we’re still facing multiple surgeries to fix the damage done by the needle.

His last foray outside our lives and in to the drug world before he stopped was almost three years ago now. He ended up living in two places in Gander with other IV drug users. Both these places had visitors and part time couch surfers all the time. They were in different locations in town, one of which was known for drug use, the other not so much. One of which he lived with young 20 somethings still trying to find themselves, the other with people my age, one of which actually went to k-12 with me. For the better part of a year (that time around) we worried every night he would be found dead or he would be present when someone else died. One of us tried to put eyes on him every few days just to be sure he was alive and his sites were not badly infected. Complete detachment is not easy when your loved one is in this state and there are many people suffering here in Gander who have no one checking on them only other addicts.

I am well aware of many other IV drug users in Gander now and have heard many of their stories firsthand. I am no longer shocked or think people are bullshitting when they share this information here in our “safe little community”. One word a lot of them used when talking about IV drug use was “powerful”… based on what a lot of them gave up, the risks they took and the loved ones they hurt I can say for sure that is one thing that’s not bullshit.

The first two individuals I met ten years ago are still here in Gander. The first one relocated here from a small NL community outside of Gander shortly after I met him and seems to be doing well, he is a remarkable artist and once gave me a picture he drew of his small town to thank me for my help. The young single mother is still struggling, her kids are no longer with her and I can confirm she was still using IV drugs a year ago as I ran in to her at a hospital ER where she had complications from doing so. The last time I saw her, about a month ago at the grocery store, she looked healthier but still never had her kids back and still had not been to rehab of any sort. I never did see the young man from the hospital who lived with his mom and grandmother again as he lived closer to Grand Falls-Windsor than Gander, I think about him often though and hope he is in recovery and still helping his mom and grandmother.

See link below (I may have shared it before) Mad Mummer Media’s 2012 documentary, The Needle and the Damage Undone, about IV drug use in NL. It is worth a watch and even though there’s been improvement, most of it is still true today.