At the end of 2019, the father of Magalie * seemed to have regained control of his life, after 40 years of addiction to cocaine and alcohol. But, like many others struggling with substance abuse, the pandemic has derailed everything for him. To the point where he was taken away by his demons.
“He had been fine for years, he had a stable job. It was the first time in his life that he had been sober for so long. Coming out of his first rehab, he was really motivated, he wanted to get his life back in hand and he had ambition, ”says the young woman in her late twenties.
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Then, in March 2020, her father’s world came crashing down. While working for the Government of Canada, forced sick leave coincided with the arrival of COVID-19 in the country and forced him to self-isolate.
“The loneliness and the fear of illness stressed him a lot and, unfortunately, he started using again. He tried to quit on his own several times, but he was unable to, he had significant withdrawal symptoms,” she explains.
‘He needed help’
He spent the next year trying to get himself hospitalized to get through his withdrawal, without success. Failing to obtain a place in the hospital, he obtained an appointment with a psychiatrist for an evaluation in the summer of 2021.
“The shrink arrived 45 minutes late, telling him he only had 15 minutes to see him. My father’s mental health was obviously very fragile, so he farted at the fret. He sabotaged his appointment and relapsed, ”explains the young woman, in a trembling voice.
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It was the last straw. Things then tumbled at lightning speed. In September, he was diagnosed with cirrhosis. Sickly worried about COVID, he refused to go to the emergency room. He died two months later.
“My father died of his cirrhosis in November, alone at home […] Honestly, I don’t know how my dad was trying to get organized in the end, but one thing is for sure, he needed help and he wasn’t able to get it, for all sorts of reasons”, regrets Magalie.
An all too common scenario
Stories like that of Magalie’s father, unfortunately, the DD Marie-Ève Morin, a family physician working in mental health and addiction, has heard it too often.
“I have seen dozens of similar stories since the start of the pandemic. Asking for help is really more complicated. I have lost 10 people in the last year and a half. Patients, family members, friends. The side effects, for people in a situation of dependency, are catastrophic,” she laments.
The experts we spoke to all agree that the use of drugs and alcohol among people struggling with addiction has increased greatly during the pandemic and that, due to a lack of resources, the serious consequences have also multiplied.
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Moreover, according to the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ), the number of deaths by possible drug poisoning was on average 56 per month in 2020 and 42 per month in 2021, while the maximum average had been 35 per month since 2017.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY GATINEAU POLICE
Nationwide, 3,500 people died from opioid overdoses in the first six months of 2021, according to federal government figures. 2021 may have been the deadliest year since 2016, when this data began to be compiled.
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Very limited resources
The difficulty of access to care can be observed everywhere in the health system. At the McGill University Health Center (MUHC), Hélène Jones, head of social services for adult sites, is struggling to meet demand. She is responsible for directing users to addiction resources.
Joel Lemay / QMI Agency
“Finding settings that are able to accept patients with addiction issues is very difficult at the moment. Whether in the community or in the public network, or even family. We end up with people who cannot access help when they need it,” she explains.
At the Maison l’Exode, a non-profit organization offering various services to dependent people, the lack of resources is such that planning is done “almost from day to day”, indicates the director general, Martin Lafortune.
“Our resources are so limited that right now, I could receive a call to be told that we have to close tonight. It’s very possible, we live with this fear every day. It’s like that for many organizations,” he says.
The fear of COVID
On the side of the drug addiction medicine service of the University Hospital Center of the University of Montreal (CHUM), we are told that emergency resources are still available, but that capacity is limited.
Photo QMI Agency, Joël Lemay
“We do not have less staff, but the usual activities are “impacted”, because we also have COVID patients”, explains the head of the service, the Dr Louis-Christophe Juteau.
The number of outpatient clinic interventions performed by the addiction medicine department also jumped during the pandemic, from 7,707 in 2019-2020, to 9,313 when COVID-19 began to shake the province in 2020-2021. It then increased to 6,041 interventions between April 1 and November 6, 2021.
However, although services are still available, many, like Magalie’s father, do not ask for the help they need because they fear COVID-19, insists the DD Marie-Eve Morin.
“People don’t want to go to the hospital, they don’t want to get COVID. In addition, we have been told for two years to avoid hospitals. I have seen very few patients come to the hospital in a state of distress in the last two years,” she concludes.
* This is a fictitious first name, at the request of the young woman, who wished to remain anonymous.
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