... we end with the duty to die and the demand to subsidise someone's sadness:
In hospital near the end of her life, Nicole Gladu, journalist, crusader and fiercely loyal friend, did not use medical assistance in dying, even though she had won a court battle with Ottawa, extending the right to MAID to those, like her, whose natural death was not reasonably foreseeable.
“I asked her, ‘Nicole, is it time? Do you want medical help to die?’ ” her friend, Micheline Raymond recalled. “She said, ‘No, I don’t want to open that drawer yet.’ Above all, she wanted to have the choice, and she wanted others to have the choice, too.
(Sidebar: oh, so you were a hypocrite? Good to know.)
**
From an early age, she faced significant mental health issues like depression that continued into adulthood. Cara says her life hit an all-time low during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Her job in a nightclub was put on hold and her relationship with a man she loved was rocky. An unrelated sexual assault landed her in the hospital in the summer of 2020, and that’s when she received the hydromorphone drip.
After that visit, she turned to street drugs – cocaine and fentanyl. She suffered numerous overdoses, one of which resulted in a massive seizure that Cara says left her unconscious for an hour.
Her dad tried to force her into sobriety, taking her to a small town in Mexico. It didn’t work. She overdosed almost immediately after returning to Canada.
“I don’t recommend drug use to anyone,” says Cara, speaking specifically of street drugs. It marked her life, she says, with hospital visits, toxic relationships, unbearable pain and severed ties to family and friends.
It was at Calgary’s drug-use site where staff helped her realize there was an option to be “safer with drug use without getting sober,” and she started doing research.
There are opioid agonist treatment programs in Alberta where powerful opioid medications, like methadone and suboxone, are prescribed to treat substance use disorder. Safe supply programs, which offer prescription alternatives to street drugs, are also becoming known across Canada.
Cara says she was rejected by multiple doctors before finding one that would prescribe her Dilaudid.
In addition to therapy, she says the prescription drug helps with her mental and physical health. It provides her stability so she can study and work while leaning into her passions, like cross-stitch and advocacy.
“Generally, the reason that we say that people need to get sober is because there’s this idea that someone who’s using drugs can’t live a balanced life that all they care about is getting high,” says Cara.
“But I am more productive now than I was when I was sober, because now I’m actually stable. I’m no longer in survival mode.”
You dedicated what remains of your shabby life to cross-stitch as opposed to actually addressing the things that are wrong in your life and encouraging others to do the same.
Right ...
I can't speak for anyone else but I'm done with calling people who give up on life "brave" and then being forced to pay for their poisons.
Why should I?
It's sad that people think addictive substances and even death are better than perseverance but that is no rationale for forcing people to be complicit in drugging and then killing them.
No comments:
Post a Comment