The faces of the invisible epidemic | Daniel Beauchamp

Contaminated drugs and counterfeit drugs affect Quebecers of all ages, from all regions and from all walks of life. Some survive it. Others leave their skin there.

Philip Mercury
The Press

Daniel Beauchamp likes to say that there are two ways to learn in life: suffering and wisdom.

At 58, he now prefers wisdom. “Because when you have to suffer to learn something, it can take time in tabarnak,” he says.

The man received us at CIPTO, the Outaouais drug addiction intervention and prevention centre, in Gatineau. Here, the one everyone calls “Dan” plays the role of “peer helper” – a way of saying that he is both a beneficiary of the services and a companion with other drug users.

A bustard feather in hand (he explains that it symbolizes the family), Dan recounts his life. We could listen to it for hours, it is so tumultuous and fascinating.

This native of Buckingham, in Outaouais, managed a farm, piloted a house building company, raised two children.

He once paddled from North Bay, Ontario to Rigaud, Quebec alone in a canoe.

He spent two and a half years with an Algonquin spiritual leader in order to become a guardian of the sacred fire.

And he lived – and still lives – with drugs.

Dan is 12 years old when he plunges into hard drugs, under the influence of his older brother and his friends.

“They were all four years older than me. I wanted to make my place with them,” he explains.

He consumes without it affecting his work. Dan grows up on a farm and soon rents one to operate it. He also has his house building business.

At 21, he got married and suddenly stopped drinking. He becomes the father of a boy, then of a girl.

“I went 14 years without consuming anything – not even a joint,” he says proudly.

When relapse rhymes with fall

One day, on a construction site, Dan falls and hurts his back.

“For me, the value of a man was the work he could do in a day. There, I was no longer worth anything, ”he said.

It sinks.

“I told my wife: bring the two children because I don’t want them to see this. I’m starting to use again and it’s going to be ugly. »

He was prescribed morphine for the pain. Dan also injects cocaine and washes it all down with alcohol. In the background, the album clay pigeonby Kevin Parent, plays on a loop.

After several years, the regime left him exhausted. He contracts HIV from a dirty needle, has to hand over control of his construction company to his brother. “You end up on the couch, you can’t move and you have trouble cooking for yourself,” he says.

Many therapies help him overcome his addictions to morphine and alcohol. Cocaine also leaves his life, before returning to it two years ago.

“For now, I accept that it is like that. If I don’t accept it, I fight with it,” he philosophizes.

During the day, Dan teaches harm reduction to other consumers, especially the young people he likes to welcome and guide.

Dan knows better than anyone that he is playing a dangerous game. He says he has lost at least 25 friends to overdoses or HIV. And he sees that the quality of drugs is increasingly variable.

“It doesn’t look good, it goes up and down all the time, he observes. They play with drugs a lot now, it’s really worse than when I was young. »

To reduce the risk, he analyzes his cocaine with strips to detect the presence of fentanyl. And he always starts by taking a very small dose in order to check the effects.

It is these tips – and many more – that he passes on to consumers. Anyone who claims to have Algonquin and Iroquois blood distills a bonus of wisdom that comes to him as much from Indigenous knowledge as from the many personal growth workshops and therapies he has attended.

“Down the ego and increase humility, he tells us before leaving us. In 25 years of progress, that’s what I understood. If you focus on that, you’ll get what you want. »