stig·ma
/ˈstiɡmə/
1. a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.
"the stigma of having gone to prison will always be with me"
The stigma of addiction, in their own words:
There are many stigmas placed on addicts. In order for these stigmas to be eliminated from our society, it's important to understand them.
Matt Stewart
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“People around me, the impression is that this is something purely controlled by our willpower and for us addicts, like we use this concept. It's called the disease concept and that we have an allergy to whatever our addiction is. And our allergy is that we have an abnormal reaction to drugs and alcohol. So if you say, have six beers at the bar and you start feeling a little tipsy and getting a little dizzy, you don't like that. The feeling you're like, ‘okay, that's it, I'm shutting it down. I don't want to do it anymore. I don't want to wake up in the morning feeling sick.’ For me, as soon as I have those six beers then it gives me the feeling that I need to have more. That's the way that this allergy manifests in my life.
[It] manifests in the phenomenon of craving, is what we call it. Once we have one, we don't know where that night's going to end, or if that night ends, you know, like for me, I could go on a spree for months. If I were to pick up drugs or alcohol today, it could be months, even years before I'm back, because it's not a matter of my mind telling me to stop using, because as soon as I put drugs into my system, my mind and my body are basically two different entities."
Greg Tymiak
"The biggest stigma is that addicts can do this on their own will and that it's their choice. The thing is that we can't do this on our own, it's an actual disease. If you try to understand what these people are going through, [you] might have a better idea [of it] because we are absolutely powerless over this addiction — We have no will and no control over it."
Challenges
The most pressing issues facing addicts today
COVID-19
From in-person recovery meetings shutting down to the isolation that addicts have had to endure as provincial restrictions tighten, the pandemic has and will continue to impact addicts and those in recovery.
According to the Alberta COVID-19 Opioid Response Surveillance Report Q2 2020:
449 people have died from an apparent unintentional opioid poisoning in the first six months of 2020. In this time, on average, 2.5 individuals died each day.
In the second quarter of 2020, 301 individuals died of an unintentional opioid poisoning.
*Osher is a psychotherapist based in London, Ont., and has treated many patients struggling with addiction.
Supervised consumption sites
Supervised consumption sites allow individuals to inject or consume substances under the supervision of trained staff and in a safe and clean environment. These services create harm reduction, which reduces the negative consequences of substance abuse, including overdoses and death.
These sites have seen a lack of funding and support from the Alberta government. In November 2020, Calgary Journal reporter Bailey Gingras-Hamilton looked at the impact of closing these sites, along with the rise of opioid overdoses:
Read the story here
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The only supervised consumption site in Calgary, located at Sheldon M. Chumir Centre. Photo by Sean Holman
Herle and Tymiak give their thoughts on the use of supervised consumption sites.
Women in Recovery
The "Big Book" is considered essential for those in recovery as they work the program and steps through AA. However this book was written in 1939 and has only ever had the contribution of one female; Marty Mann, to help add a females point of view to getting and staying sober.
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Meetings are not separated by sex, many detox and treatment centres are not separated either. Leaving people to feel more vulnerable, and some females to feel that males get predatory to those in a weak state.
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"While men display a higher prevalence for alcoholism, it is women who suffer a much greater risk for alcoholism-associated bodily damage. Although women generally consume less alcohol compared to men, females usually suffer more severe brain and other organ damage following binge or chronic alcohol abuse."
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- Sex Difference in Alcoholism: Who is at a Greater Risk for Development of Alcoholic Complication? Life Sciences
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Liz Herle
“The stigma is just as much about the addiction as it is the gender. However, it's definitely far more rare to have a man be called a crack whore than a woman, you know? Because at some point most of us are forced to use our bodies. So I'd say that that's... it's just sad and people judge [women] for that, but that's all that they have in that time to fulfill a craving that they can’t deny. I wish there was more compassion around that.
It's hard to see an addict as a human because they're using and lots of people just, they just look at them and say, 'well, they did this to themselves. They obviously wanted to live this way or they wouldn't be living like this right now.' Like that sucks because I can speak for myself that like, there's no way I wanted to live the way I was living. It's just that I could not stop using drugs. There was nothing right. Same reaction to being in distress, [it] was not there. So I wish that more people would just see addicts as humans who are really struggling right now.”
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Julie Boyce
“I think a lot of it is an internal stigma that we place upon ourselves as addicts. We tell ourselves that we are bad people, and society tells us that back.
I think the biggest thing I feel needs to get recognized is society pushes people who are addicts into the margins. And there's narratives about who they are as people. It's like, 'oh, they're lazy, or they're this, they're that.' And I don't think that's true at all. I feel like people just think that it's a moral thing.
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And people have a lot of labels for individuals who are addicted to substances, and not just in everyday society, it’s really bad in the medical community as well. People treated me in the medical community horribly, because I would end up in the hospitals for this or that, and I never really got the help I needed, I kind of fell through the cracks really quickly. Because it was like, 'Oh, I'm a bad person, I’ve done this to myself because of substance abuse.' And doctors and nurses treated me like garbage. If I'm being honest. And there were a lot of underlying issues, and there were other things that were happening that would be ignored.”
