Addiction & Mental Health Resources

Introduction

Nominated for Canadian Screen Award, this documentary covers the opioid crisis in Canada. “It features interviews with families who have lost loved ones, as well as healthcare workers and policy experts who question a health system that favors corporate profits over patients.” For example, they talk about the overprescribing of prescription medications, and how little to no punishments have been handed out. This documentary also advocates for harm reduction as a crucial way to combat this crisis.

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Quotes

“We often think that people who use are selfish, they only think about themselves, and they don’t care about the people who love them – but they do. They deeply, deeply care and they feel guilty. Danny carried an enormous amount of guilt because he knew he hurt the people he loved.”

“It’s really hard to convince people out there in the sort of regular world that it’s gonna touch their lives. You know they have this, maybe this impression that’s it’s people that are hardcore drug users on the street. That’s not the case.”

“You have the historical war on drugs and the moralistic values and politicians very hesitant to invest in the things that need to be done. The system needs a major overhaul. The system, it’s not even broken, it’s so dysfunctional and so counter-productive that we have the opposite results to what we actually want.”

“Moms Stop The Harm: it’s a network, it’s an advocacy group of families that have been affected by the opioid crisis. What our aim is to change drug policy, change it away from a focus on criminal justice and blame the person to actually seeing it as what it is, it’s a health issue.”

“You never lose votes by being tough on crime. You might lose votes if you decide to be compassionate to those that have experienced the greatest traumas in our society.”

“We are dealing with a crisis here, people are dying every day. This shouldn’t be about ideology, it should be about what the data shows us, and it tell us if we were to right now decriminalize possession of all illegal drugs, we could reduce the risk that people might die from overdoses.”

“It’s not really a drug problem when you think about it. Really it’s a problem with people learning to manage to how to cope and manage and deal with boredom and curiosity, but also deal with trauma and stress and depression and anxiety and isolation.”

“For every dollar invested in substance abuse treatment, you save 7 to 10 dollars in societal expenses, and that’s on the expenses that can be measured. It doesn’t measure the expenses, the suffering that you can’t measure.”

Harm Reduction

• Do Supervised Consumption Sites Increase Crime? ‘The Answer To That Is A Flat No’
• Does Evidence Support Supervised Injection Sites?
• Fact Check: Dispelling Myths About Supervised Consumption Sites
• Harm Reduction: A B.C. Community Guide [PDF]
• Harm Reduction for Opioids: A Canadian Perspective
• Harm Reduction Practices in Communities
• How to Use Naloxone
• Indigenous Harm Reduction
• National Harm Reduction Coalition – Harm Reduction Truth
• Rapid Access Models for Substance Use Services [PDF]
• Why Safe Injection Sites Are Considered More Effective Than Needle Exchange Programs

Opioid Crisis

• Beyond Supply: How We Must Tackle the Opioid Epidemic [PDF]
• California’s Opioid Crisis
• Facts About Naltrexone [PDF]
• Fentanyl: America’s Grim New Opioid Addiction
• How America Got Hooked on Opioids
• How Good Intentions Contributed to Bad Outcomes [PDF]
• How the Government is Making the Opioid Crisis Worse
• Opioid Crisis: Addiction, Overprescription, and Insufficient Primary Prevention
• The Impact of the Deadly Fentanyl ‘Plague’ on One American City
• The Opioid Crisis in Canada: A National Perspective
• Understanding the Opioid Overdose Epidemic
• Unraveling the Start of the Opioid Crisis
• What Led to the Opioid Crisis – and How to Fix It
• Why Is There an Opioid Crisis?

Opioid Use Disorder

• 2-Minute Neuroscience: Opioids
• Drug Addiction: How Opioids Like Fentanyl Work
• How Do Opiates Affect the Nervous System?
• How Drugs Hijack Your Brain’s Mu Opioid Receptors
• Medications for Opioid Use Disorder
• Medications for Opioid Use Disorder
• Opiate Addiction | The Causes
• Opiate Addiction | The Signs
• Opiate Addiction | Why It’s So Intense
• Opiate Use Disorder or Opiate Addiction?
• Opioid Addiction (CAMH)
• Opioid Overdose (WHO)
• Opioid Use Disorder (NIH)
• Opioid Use Disorder: Medical Treatment Options
• Opioids & the Body: The Science of An Overdose
• Signs of Opioid Use Disorder
• Therapeutic Approaches to Opioid Use Disorder: What is the Current Standard of Care?
• This Is What Happens to Your Brain on Opioids
• Treatment of Opioid-Use Disorders
• What Causes Opioid Addiction, and Why Is It So Tough to Combat?

Prescription Addiction

• Addicted to Prescription Drugs at Age Eleven
• Commonly Abused Prescription Drugs
• Hooked: The Dangers of Prescription Drug Addiction
• Opioid Addiction Is the Biggest Drug Epidemic in U.S. History. How’d We Get Here?
• Prescription Drug Abuse (Mayo Clinic)
• Prescription Drug Abuse (WebMD)
• Prescription Drugs (CCSA)
• Prescription Opioids (CAMH)
• Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic: Balancing Societal and Individual Benefits and Risks of Prescription Opioid Use
• Relationship between Nonmedical Prescription-Opioid Use and Heroin Use
• The Most Addictive Prescription Drugs on the Market
• Understanding Addiction Prescription Drugs