WEBVTT - Garth Mullins on Drug User Activism & Saving Lives with SAFE SUPPLY of the Drugs People Want 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:07.720 Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:11.840 of iHeart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the show 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:15.079 where we talk about all things drugs. But any of 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.760 views expressed here do not represent those of iHeart Media, 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:23.480 Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.400 an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.720 even represent my own and nothing contained in this show 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.680 should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:44.920 any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. My guest today 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:47.000 is someone I don't think I've ever met, but he's 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:50.360 doing remarkable work in the city of Vancouver and province 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:54.320 of British Columbia and Canada. His name is Garth Mullins 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:57.040 and he's become well known as host of an award 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:02.440 winning podcast called Crackdown. What makes his podcast somewhat unique 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:05.920 is that he and his co producers are themselves drug 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:10.480 users and drug user organizers and activists. They're mostly working 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:14.280 with Van DOW, which is an acronym for the Vancouver 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.520 Area Network of Drug Users, perhaps the longest standing drug 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:22.600 user organization in North America. So, Garth, thank you ever 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:26.480 so much for joining me today on Psychoactive Ethan. It's 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:29.080 a great privilege to be here. I've been an admirer 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:32.400 of your work for a long time and that's nice 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:34.480 to talk to you. Okay, well, thank you, thank you 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:37.119 very much. Garth. Let me just start by asking why 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:40.520 did you start this podcast a few years ago. I'm 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:42.679 an old school dope fain. You know, that's the story 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:45.319 of my life is I've been on some kind of 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:48.120 opioid pretty much every day of my adult life. For 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:51.240 most of them, and for a long time that was Heroin, 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:55.160 and for a while now it's been methodone and uh, 0:01:55.200 --> 0:02:00.600 everything in between. And I came to under stand our 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:04.800 struggle just through my own personal experience with police, the 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:07.600 different institutions that you run into if you're a drug user, 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:11.799 and also with losing so many people across my whole life, 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:14.359 like maybe half the people I came up with are gone. 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.200 And I saw the way that the world looked at 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:22.200 us and saw us in popular culture and journalism, and 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:24.120 I was like, those aren't the people around me. Those 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:26.240 aren't the people that I know. The people that I 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.080 know are actually, most of the time pretty rational and 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:31.960 smart and kind of trying to make their way and 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.600 then trying to look out for each other. And I 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:37.080 knew a little bit about how to make podcasts and 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:39.720 make radio because I played in punk bands for a 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:41.720 long time. When you do that, you've got to kind 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:43.680 of fix your own gear and run your own sound 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:47.400 and sometimes make your own records. So, um, it seemed 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:51.760 like this could be my contribution. We don't ever really 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.200 talk about the drugs themselves very much. So if you 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:56.760 want to tune in and hear what it's like to 0:02:56.800 --> 0:03:01.080 get high on um LSD or what it's like to be, 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:04.440 you know, not in on heroin, we don't really get 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:08.760 there exactly. Our podcast is like about the war, you know, 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:11.200 So it's it's if we're talking about a drug war, 0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:13.720 we really talk about the war part of it, I 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:15.720 guess a lot more, and what our side is doing 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:19.320 to organize ourselves in that war. This is a podcast 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:24.800 about this giant, terrible conflict that spans the world, which 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:27.720 is an impossibly large subject, but it's actually just about 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:30.760 me and a few of my friends and what's going 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:32.920 on with them and how we're trying to organize in 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:35.680 our little part of it, and I always think, why 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:38.560 would people care very much about Vancouver. We should be 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:41.320 making this more universal or something. But what I have 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:45.320 noticed is what happens in this town will happen everywhere 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:48.320 else eventually. And I'm not quite sure why that is yet. 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:53.320 But we had fent and all contaminated drugs. That was 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:55.640 the first time I was noticing it. You know, we 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:58.960 had massive waves of heroin and stuff before a lot 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.640 of other places in Canada, in the US, you know, 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:07.240 And we're getting stuff now benzo diazepine contamination into the 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:10.360 stuff that sold as opioids over the last couple of years, 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:12.400 and I'm starting to hear reports of that from other 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:14.640 places in the US. Two first So, for some reason 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:16.919 to do with supply chain or trade patterns or something, 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:19.039 what happens to us here is going to happen to 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:21.400 other people. There's a good chance of it. I mean, 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.640 this is a collective enterprise with people at Van do 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.320 other drug users. I know. It went award for, you know, 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:31.880 basically an investigative journalism that exposed the fact if the 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:35.320 government had replaced the traditional effective form of method on 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:37.800 with another form of method on that was cheaper but 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:39.960 wasn't working as well, and they denied it wasn't working 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.440 as well. So Garth, I mean when you launched this podcast, 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:47.120 was it the emergence of fentanyl and the and the 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:50.640 gross increase in over those fatalities that prompted you to 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:54.200 do this or something else? It was just a coincidence 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:57.480 of different events, you know. Um, I was just an 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:01.320 activist at van Do. I met this Dr Ryan McNeil, 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:04.360 who's in Yale now, but it was UBC at the time. Um. 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:08.360 We were going around to lobby government on small changes 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.520 to methodon policy, and you know, we'd go into these 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:14.719 rooms with government and try and tell them this or that. 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:17.760 Me and other people from the BC Association people on 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.960 Methodon would say our piece. Ryan would present the research 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:23.960 and we leave the rooms and we go, wow, this 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:26.440 is not convincing them. We're not really getting anywhere, but 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:29.560 maybe it'd make an interesting podcast. And Ryan's like, oh, yeah, 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:31.720 we could do that. I think we could do that. 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:35.440 And so, uh, you know, we got ahold of a 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.279 few of our favorite activists, people that I've worked with 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:40.040 for a long time, and we sat down and said 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:43.039 do we want to do this? Do we need this? 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:45.800 Is this something the drug user movement wants. And the 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.640 very first question was what the funk is a podcast? 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:53.279 I said, It's just like radio shoved in the computer, 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:56.000 you know, And they're like, yeah, we I mean, we've 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:57.840 always want to tell our story and we always want 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:02.280 to embrace whatever technology gets it out the door that way. Uh. 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:05.039 And so the that we listened to a few different 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:07.440 ways that we could do it. We had this discussions 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:09.400 on the kind of topics we wanted to cover and 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.920 the kind of research we wanted to mobilize. I found 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:16.240 some people in Vancouver who who had also done um 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:22.159 some audio reporting on the heroin prescription Heroin project, and 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:25.720 we got all got together and started making the podcast. 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:29.400 But man, the thing that really I realized is I 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:31.880 couldn't just like stand in the sidelines and hold the 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:35.680 mic and interview people and stuff. I just share some 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:38.680 of myself too, you know, Like that's the job of 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:41.400 the host. And I kind of maybe I didn't think 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:43.719 about that very much starting out, because I didn't have 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.880 like this ability to explain my life or whatever, because I, 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:50.840 like I said, I've been like really carrying a lot 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:54.840 of shame about it. So the podcast helped me understand 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.600 a little bit more who I am and be okay 0:06:57.640 --> 0:06:59.880 to talk about myself and those parts of my life. 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.080 And that's been a real great gift, you know, Like 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:05.880 I I never thought that would come out of it. 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:07.400 You know, I thought, oh, this would be great. I'll 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:09.240 get to interview all these cool people. I'll get to 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:11.920 profile a bunch of activists that I know who really 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:14.760 deserved the spotlight. But I never thought I'd be talking 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:19.280 these little vignettes and anecdotes from my own life, you know. Um, 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:21.760 And it's been good that way. Yeah. I think we're 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.280 having very similar experiences hosting our podcast. And I'll tell 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:27.720 you that your answer to the question what's the podcast 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:30.960 is the exact thing that I get to old mom. Well, 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:34.160 that's good, you know, I mean it is. It is funny, right, 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.280 But in Canada, one in five people doesn't really have 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:41.560 good internet access. So like we do listening parties, and 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:43.480 so it's really legit that lots of people don't know 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:45.960 what a podcast is, because why would you. Um, So 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:49.320 we just play episodes of the podcast out loud at 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:52.080 Van Deu and people can come and listen and then 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:55.600 have a discussion afterwards. And I found out from people 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:57.720 just writing me that people all over the place are 0:07:57.760 --> 0:07:59.440 doing that and I didn't even know about it. Like 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:01.720 someone into Ana was having I think they were calling 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:04.000 it crafts and crackdown where they have snacks and do 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:07.080 knitting or like glue things and and listen and then 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:10.080 have conversations. So like, yeah, I mean, if if people 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:11.960 want to do that, we and we did create it 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:14.440 to be an organizing tool and and that seems like 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:16.080 a good use of it to me. So let me 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:19.320 tell me how old are you now? A middle age 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:22.000 I am like on the wrong side of fifty now, 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.800 but only just the wrong side of fifty. I take 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:28.320 that means north of okay, Okay, so that means born 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.960 in the early seventies. Even is my policy to never 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:35.079 give out the date of birth. Okay, the police have 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:37.240 asked me to. So I'm not being I'm not trying 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.520 to be coy, like, oh, you're trying to make you 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:41.920 think I'm younger than I am. No, I'm fucking middle 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:46.360 age guy. Okay, Okay. Well, so when you reflect back, like, 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:49.760 you know, how did Garth mullins land up getting involved 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:52.360 in Heroin? It was as a teenager in your twenties? 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:54.920 Was it in Vancouver? Or elsewhere, you know, where'd you 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.120 grow up? What's your own thoughts reflecting back on all 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:01.160 this about how and why you landed up? Yeah, I 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.720 mean I reckon it's like so many other people, you 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.280 have some bad experiences, you're kind of alienated from your 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:12.360 family and your community as a kid, and you start 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:15.800 looking for what's the way back into that? And you know, 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:19.080 so I was, like lots of other people, just drinking 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:22.520 and trying different drugs when I was you know, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.040 and then eventually, you know, I come to opioids and 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:28.520 that seems the right thing. And then I might have 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:31.040 even been when I was in San Francisco when I 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:34.640 was nineteen where I first tried the opioid that was 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:38.040 just like ah Chef's kiss. It was black tar heroin, 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:41.280 and I just thought, fuck me, this is what everybody 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.640 else is feeling all the time. Like I just felt like, uh, 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:48.560 like this constant sort of howling of ghosts around me. 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:50.960 You know, like like from from Raiders, that lost arc. 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:53.080 You know, you got the little the little arc and 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:54.960 when they take the lid off, all the face melting 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:58.240 ghosts fly everywhere and get everybody. But this is like 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:00.280 this puts the lid on the arc. Very nice. Sleean 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:04.080 keeps all the face melt and ghosts safely inside. And 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:06.199 so yeah, I mean I was I was going to 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:10.640 come back to that for sure, and I did. Did 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:12.760 you have this kind of addiction issues like running in 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.440 the family before you or were you sort of the 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:18.680 first in the family to be I think we probably 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:20.520 got it in the family, you know. I mean, I'm 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:23.840 not sure. I'm not sure how it gets characterized my 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:26.120 I mean, my family doesn't have a history that I 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:29.640 know of with hard drugs, but maybe maybe drinking is 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:32.400 more common. But I don't know that that's where I 0:10:32.440 --> 0:10:36.520 get it from. You know, I think, uh, it's it's 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.080 so hard to find the root causes. But I I 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:43.319 sometimes think of it like this, right, like the world 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:46.160 as I've known it has been getting shittier and shittier 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:49.040 and shittier until we're almost at the end of it now, 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:51.080 Like we got a guy in Russia with his finger 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.560 on nuclear button. Climate change is killing a lot of 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.840 people here in British Columbia. Five people died in the 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:00.959 heat wave last summer. And we're not that bigger province. 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.880 We got thousands of people from toxic drugs. It's just 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:07.280 like the whole place is going to hell. My question 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:09.439 to other people is not why why do I Drew 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.719 do drugs? It's like, why don't you do drugs? How 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:16.359 are you getting away without this nice cushion of opioids 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.080 to sort of take the edge off of the apocalypse. 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:21.480 So that's what I wonder. It's I kind of have 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:23.840 given up trying to figure out what my issue is, 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:27.720 But what's everybody else's. You know, I read that you 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:32.280 had grown up initially like not in Vancouver, a greater 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:35.800 Vancouver area, but like in the Northwest Territory, I mean 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:39.520 a sort of remote part of North America. Yeah, I 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.079 mean I was. I was a kid in the seventies 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.120 in in Yellowknife, which is north of sixty you know, 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:48.640 it's almost it's the Subarctic. But I loved it there, 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:52.199 you know, I had really I had a good childhood there. 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.480 You know, I did like it. Yeah, So that was 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.160 That's definitely. It's definitely a It's a good place for 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:00.280 a kid, you know, a small town before where you 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:03.560 get too old, you can like ride your bike all 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:05.920 over the place with the other kids, and and uh, 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:08.560 you know, as a mining town, so there's lots of 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:12.319 different kind of characters in that place. I liked it, Yeah, 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:14.560 but I ALWASO also think of those kind of places, 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:17.480 Like if you think about where, generally speaking, are the 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:20.880 worst alcohol problems in the world, the worst relationships with booze, 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:23.360 and it's typically the closly are of the Arctic, the 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.720 worst of the problems with booze. Right, you look at Russia, Scandinavia, Alaska, 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:29.800 Northern Canada, you know, wherever it's kind of light twenty 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:31.840 two hours a day and then dark twenty two hours 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:35.840 a day, and alcohol just seems to play some particular 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:41.200 role in societies like that. I mean I think that's true. Um, Like, 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:45.160 like once colonialism got ahold of northern Canada in the 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.440 early twentieth century and brought booze in in a big way, 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:51.240 I think that was probably true. I don't think there's 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:55.120 anything necessarily like linked to the environment or anything like that. 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:58.520 Like people managed without for thousands of years. So yeah, 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:02.079 maybe there's maybe white people are maladapted to long polar 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:05.400 nights or something. I don't know, but um, definitely, when 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:07.000 I was a kid, there was lots of lots of 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:09.360 booze in that town for sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:11.400 I just think about the history of alcohol prohibition. You know, 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.360 we had in the US, you had two consideration in Canada, 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:16.360 and especially it was popular I think in the North 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:19.160 Scandinavian Russia or the other places that flirted with it, 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:22.199 and they seemed to be the places where people's relationship 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:24.680 with alcohol was different than it was saying places like 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:27.319 Southern Europe or Latin America. Right, You know that you 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:31.000 basically consumed alcohol to get drunk, and you know, the 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:33.280 association with how light or dark. It's kind of I 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:35.160 don't know if it's my own theory, probably other people 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:37.280 think that as well, but it's sort of set a 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:40.640 frame for kind of thinking about the use of maybe 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:44.760 what was oftentimes the only popular psychoactive substance available, about 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:47.320 using in a way which was different than a more 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:53.240 kind of normalized consumed booze with food this sort of thing. Yeah, 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:56.240 that that could be. That could be. I haven't really traveled, 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:58.280 um all that much in Southern Europe, but I know 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:00.200 what you're talking about, like having a nice dinner with 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.000 wine and all that kind of thing. Yeah, it could be. 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:06.280 And you're also a bit different, right, I mean you're 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:08.360 I mean just you know, I mean, just say a 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:12.440 little more about that getting picked on and bullied for 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:15.599 for different reasons. Yeah, I mean I got albinism and 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:18.960 almost no eyesight, so that means like like albino, like uh, 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:23.200 platinum hair, pale skin, almost blind kind of thing. So 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:28.480 it definitely made uh, school and bullying and all that 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:31.920 like part of my story for sure. Yeah. When I was, um, 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:34.560 you know, when I was in elementary school and stuff, 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:36.920 they called me Ghost and Casper the Ghosts and stuff 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:39.560 like that, and I hated it, you know. But now 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:41.680 ghost is a pre cool street name, so I'm okay. 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:44.000 I'm okay with it now. But it's just like back 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:47.400 in the day, you know, I was like, no, so 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:49.240 you were one of those like the first time you 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:52.480 used heroin, it was like, wow, I like this stuff. 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:55.680 It makes me feel I don't know, normal at ease. 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.360 I'm coming back to it, Yeah, for sure, you know, 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:01.840 And I was, I was a depressed kid, you know, 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:04.760 I was. I think I was a suicidal kid, you know. 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:09.040 I I certainly dreamed of not being alive, and uh, 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:11.760 you know, I never I never really tried to hurt 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:14.000 myself like that, but I did. I can look back 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:16.240 in my notebooks and journals and I'm like, Wow, that 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:21.040 kid was fucked up and it stopped that, you know. 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:23.800 So I was one of those people who I guess 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:26.160 I was self medicating, but I'm not sure what the 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:29.280 outcomes would have been for me, but for the refuge 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:32.840 that heroin provided, you know. So, I think even though 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:35.960 it didn't maybe look like it from the outside, at 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:38.440 the time, I was reaching for a rational choice, you know, 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.400 I was reaching for a kind of a survival, a 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:43.520 kind of a way to feel a little better. And 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:45.760 did it put you into a kind of community of 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:48.880 fellow drug users or were you kind of using heroin 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:51.680 but otherwise spending a fair bit of your life and 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:55.640 sort of non drug, non heroin using world, shall we say? Yeah? 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:57.880 I was always in both. So I always knew a 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:01.000 crew of people who were wired and was connected like that. 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:03.640 But I often, you know, had a workplace that I 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:06.360 was going to where people didn't know. I mean, I 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:09.280 think my family had some idea, but I tried to 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:12.400 you know, minimize it and kind of tone it down 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:15.440 a little bit. And I certainly didn't advertise, you know, 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.280 like only only a consience. It seems like a funny 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:20.080 thing to say being on a podcast. It's like, Hey, 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:22.880 I'm a dope fiend. But uh, that's this is kind 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:25.120 of new for me, at least it's only been a 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.520 few years maybe, you know, or something, when I started 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:30.960 saying beyond a small group of frenzy ad this is 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:34.440 my story. Oh is that right? It's really recently, the 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:36.680 kind of coming out about the past like that and 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:39.000 through the podcast and such. Yeah. I mean I was 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:42.440 an activist for sure with Van du for longer than that, 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:46.480 the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, but um, you know, 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.280 I didn't really cop to it. If I ever did 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:52.480 an interview or something, I would be kind of nebulous 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:55.040 about it. And so I was very ashamed. You know. 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:57.560 I did try to keep it to myself or at 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:00.960 least not advertise. And I learned from the activists at 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:04.040 Van Dew the power of like owning your own truth 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:06.120 and not being ashamed of it. And it's like, finally 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:09.320 you get to relieve yourself of carrying this big backpack 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:13.120 full of secrets and bullshit and shame and all of that. 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:17.280 And so that's been a lovely gift of activism. So garth. 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:20.160 I mean you're you're in you're using heroin, I guess 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:25.280 from your late teens for uh ten twenty years. I 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:28.679 mean basically during that time, are you smoking or injecting it? 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:31.280 Are you housed all the time? Are you having legal 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:34.640 jobs all the time? Do you get involved in criminal 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:37.080 other criminal activity apart from obtaining your drugs? I mean, 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:39.520 what's your life like during this period. It's a little 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:42.280 bit of everything. So, yeah, I had periods where I 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:49.680 was pretty poorly slash not housed. Um. Mostly I had places, UM, 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:54.040 I was working sometimes sometimes white collar jobs, sometimes blue 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:58.600 collar jobs, sometimes no jobs, you know, getting welfare. Sometimes 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:01.080 I was going to school, uh, you know, like post 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:06.520 secondary and sometimes I guess what you would call nickel 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:12.560 and dime criminal activities outside of outside of the obtaining drugs, Yeah, 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:14.680 and injecting all the time. I was one of those 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:16.639 ivy drug users, and I kind of thought it was 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:19.600 like a waste of time or a waste of drugs 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:21.240 to do it any other way, like to smoke it 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:22.960 or something like that, you know. So I was definitely 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:26.560 just like get that right to the brain. And you're 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:29.600 pretty loyal to heroin or you're mixing it with cocaine 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:32.400 or other stimulants or benzos or things like that. Oh yeah, 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:36.439 definitely liked speedballs. I you know, heroin and crack together. 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:39.480 That was pretty good. But yeah, heroin was the main 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:43.119 thing for me, and other opioids if I couldn't get heroin. 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:48.720 And in terms of taking precautions around HIV A TEPS 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:51.560 using a needle exchange program, what was your relationship to 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:55.240 all that sort of sort of self involvement in harm reduction, Well, 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:58.639 I guess, you know, like back in it was still 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:02.600 not easy always get a new syringe. So I did 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:07.320 share with people on occasion, on desperate occasion, and we 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:11.200 did bleach the needle. And that's you know, only so effective, 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:13.800 but that was the harm reduction protocol at the time. 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:18.959 And um, you know, because the police would take needles 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:20.800 off you if they found them, and this and that. 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:24.000 So I mean back in the day, you had one 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:26.920 needle for like a month or whatever, and you'd keep 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:29.040 stabbing that blunt thing into you and you'd have to 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:31.320 sharpen it on a match striker and that, you know, 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:34.040 the rubber would wear down inside and you'd be like, oh, 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:36.440 this isn't gonna be good. The numbers would wear off 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.399 the barrel like it was bad. I mean, now in 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:43.440 Vancouver there's enough syringes that most people or a lot 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:46.240 of people can use a new one every time they inject, 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:49.120 which is the preferred practice, which is smart because when 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:51.800 you look under a microscope, those things get blunt really fast. 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:56.919 And also it's like not not sterile anymore, um importantly. 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.399 So yeah, I mean doing all that definitely sucked up 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.920 my veins, like they're all collapsed. But um, I picked 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:06.520 up harm reduction. I think the first time I really 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:08.720 figured out what this was all about was in a 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:11.240 civic center park in San Francisco when there was a 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:15.920 big tent encampment there and these people came around with 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:18.560 buckets and it was a guerrilla needle exchange, like you 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:20.359 turn in your needle and they give you a new one. 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:22.800 It was illegal, and these people were risking or asked 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:25.760 to do this, and when I you know, everyone lined 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:29.280 up and exchanged their needles pretty quick. But the guy, 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.399 I remember, she is just like stay safe, man. He 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.359 wasn't giving me some lecture about twelve step or quitting 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:37.400 or nothing like that. And it's the first time I'd 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:40.399 run into anything like that. I was completely amazed. I 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:42.720 was like, that is a lot of respect for that. 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:46.000 I think it was people from prevention point in San Francisco. Yeah, no, 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.119 I remember those days, the late eighties, early nineties in 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:51.280 New York, San Francisco, people doing little forms of harmonducts 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:53.560