New Vancouver detox centre serves as a reflection of how attitudes around substance abuse have evolved

published on March 22, 2019 by Andrea Woo in Globe and Mail

For all the chaos he experienced in some 30 years of drug addiction, Todd Kenneth’s lowest moment came when it was quiet, and he was alone.

Until that point, Mr. Kenneth had interwoven the ravages of his drug use with scraps of a normal life: He worked a well-paying job. He had a bit of money. He ended each night on a mattress or couch, or in the warm embrace of a partner.

But he had none of those things when he found himself, some two decades ago, wandering a strip of Metro Vancouver’s Fraser Valley that had become a ramshackle encampment for the area’s homeless and drug-using population. Nights were spent either using drugs to stay awake or sleeping upright at a table in a drug-user resource facility, hoping he wouldn’t be robbed before sunrise…

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