If a young person dies of cancer because they couldn’t get the treatment they needed, would you say it’s their parents’ fault or their own fault?
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
I put the question very seriously to readers who reacted to my Sunday column on deaths by overdose by relying on received ideas on the subject.
“It’s not up to the state to solve the problem, but up to the family. Education begins at home,” one reader wrote to me.
“And if we spoke instead of empowering parents? “added a reader who believes that the parallel with cancer does not hold water.
“Cancer is something that is inflicted on us, that falls on our heads. “While the addiction, according to her, would be caused by” the way parents raise their child in the land of Care Bears “, without preparing him to face the difficulties of life.
This may be true in the land of prejudice. But not in the land of science.
What science tells us is that drug addiction is a chronic disease, not a moral defect.
It would not occur to us to condemn people suffering from type 2 diabetes by saying that it is not up to the state to pay for their sedentary lifestyle or their little varied diet. Nor would we do it for people with cancer. We take care of them and that’s it. Patients struggling with addiction and their loved ones should be entitled to the same respect.
I quote Suzanne Brissette, researcher in drug addiction medicine at the Center hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM), interviewed by my colleague Philippe Mercure as part of his excellent report on overdose deaths: “We can never say it enough: addiction to drugs like opioids is a brain disease, not a behavioral disorder. »
As Philippe’s report vividly showed, the invisible epidemic of overdoses, which leads to 500 preventable deaths per year in Quebec, threatens people from all walks of life.
Citizens like you and me are miles away from all the clichés about naughty “drug addicts”.
The fight against this invisible epidemic requires that we fight against the overdose of prejudice that still surrounds it. I quote only one, very tenacious: too often still, addiction is perceived as a simple lack of will which deserves to be punished rather than as a complex health problem which can be treated. However, we know that this stigmatization of people struggling with addiction has serious consequences. This makes it harder for them to ask for help without being judged.
Solutions exist. And the most effective, in some cases, are not necessarily the ones you might think of spontaneously. This is one of the things that Isabelle Fortier, this courageous bereaved mother I was talking about on Sunday, did by obtaining a certificate in drug addiction after the death of her daughter, who died of an overdose at the age of 24.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Isabelle Fortier, mother of Sara-Jane, who died at the age of 24 from an overdose.
Before reading studies on the subject, she thought that treatments based on pure and simple abstinence constituted THE most effective solution. Do you have a drug problem? Immediately stop using it and you won’t have any more problems…
It is not that simple. Telling a person with a drug addiction, “Stop using! is a bit like saying to a diabetic, “Stop being diabetic! “, she realized. It ignores the fact that addiction, like diabetes, is a chronic disease.
What works better for many people is the more pragmatic and humane approach to harm reduction, at the heart of Quebec’s overdose prevention strategy. Basically, this consists of reducing the negative consequences associated with drug use, in particular by providing a medical prescription for opioids to the patient, if necessary, rather than letting him die of an overdose using contaminated black market drugs.
Providing drugs to people who are addicted to them may shock some people, of course. But as the DD Marie-Ève Goyer in the report, it shouldn’t be a question of morality, but of science. Studies show that it is a treatment that works. “Imagine if we had this for cancer or for any other disease and we didn’t use it: the Minister of Health would be lynched. Here, it’s the opposite. You have to fight to put it in place. »
All because of an overdose of prejudice. Isn’t that what should really shock us?