Native kids send heartbreaking letter to drug-addicted parents
CAT LAKE, ONT. Item No. 9 in the 12-point “memo” to members of the Cat Lake reserve from the children in Grade 6 is as blunt as it is painful.
“It hurts us and shoomis and kokum (grandpa and grandma) when you’re doing drugs and you’re not at home.”
Cat Lake is the centre of prescription drug addiction in Canada. Community leaders figure that between 70 and 80 per cent of the adults are hooked on the narcotic pain killers OxyContin or Percocet.
Governments and local health authorities are slowly gearing up to deal with the runaway addiction that has slammed communities across the country, especially First Nations.
But the help can’t come quickly enough for the children of Cat Lake in northwestern Ontario 400 kilometres north of Thunder Bay.
The children put together the list over the course of a few days in a workshop with the help of a local band member.
They are desperate for ways to end the crisis in their community that triggered waves of theft and left children hungry and bereft of the stability and support they crave.
Local officials say they collect 500 needles a week through the needle-exchange program from a population of about 700. They have put 172 adults on their list of confirmed addicts, and another 250 are suspected. Almost everyone else is either a child or an elder.
Oxy, the highly addictive and extremely expensive little pill, has become a way of life here and in many reserves.
The drug is supposed to be taken for intense pain, by prescription only. It produces an instant high when crushed, snorted or injected, and that high has triggered a massive demand for the drug across the continent. Some of the biggest profits are drawn from some of the poorest people in Canada.
The narcotic pain killer is no longer being produced. Purdue Pharmaceuticals has pulled it from the shelves, prompting First Nations leaders to warn of a pending crisis of withdrawal for which no one is well-prepared.
Kicking the addiction, for many, is too punishing to bear.
Abnormal sleeping patterns, violent shakes, diarrhea, headache and anxiety are common, for days on end. Relapses are frequent.
The dealers’ stockpiles of the opioid are now dwindling and the price is climbing steeply. Authorities have been bracing for a withdrawal epidemic on reserves.
A full-strength pill can sell for about $1,000 and a quarter-dose for about $250. When a supply came into the community, users would scour their houses for possessions to sell, hit up their relatives for cash, raid their savings or gamble for cash, said Constable Kyle Brend of the Nishnawbe-Aski Police force in Cat Lake. Lately, there’s been slightly less of the door-to-door scavenging for drug money.
“You sell a digital camera for $60. You sell a couple of things like that, you have money. It’s getting harder nowadays with the prices.”
Instead, addicts are looking for other ways to get high.
Rumours and Internet chatter about how to abuse the new version of Oxycontin — called OxyNEO — abound. Health workers suspect increased usage of cocaine and especially morphine. Brend sees evidence of more booze, even though Cat Lake, like many reserves in the area, is supposed to be dry.
“Now it seems there’s a lot of drinking to offset what they’re not getting in the pills.”
The police are cracking down as best they can on contraband. But even though Cat Lake has only one entry point — the airport — now that the winter road has melted, the community has only ever ejected one person for dealing, Brend recalls.
The pills are easy to hide — in pockets, packages, even inside diapers or the lining of clothing. The entire community knows who is dealing, including the chief, the council and police, but authorities never catch them in the act because they are protected by tightly knit family and friends.
So instead of focusing on crime and punishment, community leaders focus on healing the addicted and convincing any remaining non-users to stay clean.
Help on that front is on the way, but ever so slowly, and in small doses. Stopping is far easier said than done.
The medical treatment, Suboxone, mitigates the horrible withdrawal symptoms. But the recovery program takes weeks and requires health authorities to monitor the patients very closely.
In Cat Lake, Health Canada and band administrators are scrambling to start a Suboxone program that will combine a land-based recovery. They plan to convert an old building near the band office into a respite where Suboxone can be administered and patients can be monitored closely for a week.
Then, the recovering addicts will be sent out into the bush, with few supplies except the very basics. For several weeks, under the eye of a health professional, they’ll set up camp, hunt, fish, soak in nature, and — hopefully — conquer their addictions.
The first intake of three people starts on April 30. The waiting list has 15 names on it. But it should have hundreds, says health director Valerie Spence.
The Canadian Press
Memo to Cat Lake
The Grade 6 students in Cat Lake recently spent a few days compiling a letter to the majority of adults in their community, the majority of whom are addicted to prescription drugs such as OxyContin. This what they wrote:
Memo to: Members of Cat Lake
Message from the Youth of Cat Lake
1. We don’t like when you use needles and give needles to others. You put yourself and others at RiSK!
2. We get annoyed and we feel scared when you do drugs.
3. We feel unloved and depressed when you’re not with us.
4. We feel unhappy and helpless.
5. We feel that we don’t know what to do to help you stop doing Drug.
6. We want you to stop because it hurts our family and we don’t like when we’re angry.
7. We love you, but we don’t like what you are doing to yourself.
8. STOP NOW! We want you to get help and get better.
9. It hurts us and shoomis and kokum (grandpa and grandma) when you’re doing drugs and you’re not at home.
10. If you really love us you will try to stop.
11. Please go for treatment and get HEALTHY!
12. It’s what You do that counts. Only you can make the RiGHT CHOICE!
We need a HAPPY, HEALTHY Community! From Grade 6.
oogle
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Khaleesi
Bookmarks