A man who lost both a friend and brother to the toxic drug supply warns that it can happen to anyone.
If these stories help even one person, it’s worth it,” says Ryland, an agriculturist from British Columbia. “I’ve known a lot of people who have struggled with opioids. Like, someone who’s had a lower back injury, they give them oxys or whatever. Then their supply gets cut out, and that person never intended to start going to the streets.
The slippery slope of a prescription opioid is too common a tale. However a person ends up dependent on the drug, the real killer is the amount of illicit fentanyl in the street drug supply.
Ryland has at least two cases that hit home for him. A close friend who was a traveling musician—one of the most talented and creative people he knew—was going through a rough patch. “He told me he was busking the day before, and someone had stolen his skateboard and backpack,” says Ryland. “I was excited to help him, it was raining, I offered for him to stay the night, get him some food.”
His friend insistently declined, promised they would hang out tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. Ryland learned the next morning that his friend had died from a fentanyl overdose.
Fentanyl also killed Ryland’s older brother. As a former drug user, he’d been sober for about two years, attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and was on his way to achieving a dream career as a paramedic. The day he graduated, he relapsed—Ryland still doesn’t know why. That single wrong turn, despite the recovery path he was on, took his brother’s life.
“All walks of life, it can grab you for sure,” says Ryland. “You can end up on the streets, too, if you lost your job and missed a couple of payments on your rent, like… we’re not far off that unless you have a ton of money put away, which a lot of people don’t.”