No surprise there.

Many of the addicts I’ve spoken to started their road to full blown addiction by smoking the occasional joint, thinking casual marijuana use would not hurt them.  How wrong they were.

Of course, the majority of the chemically dependant I’ve talked to call the Downtown Eastside home, where they live below the poverty line and do what they must to survive.  For many of them, ‘survival’ depends largely on when the next hit of their chosen poison will be.

Their lives aren’t pretty or glamorous, or anything I would ever want any of my loved ones to experience first hand.

************

Her name was Roxanne.

Petite and with black eyes and raven coloured hair, her spirit was such that she would talk to anyone and her sweet disposition made her easy to deal with when she found herself in trouble.  Roxanne did not steal or commit robberies or take part in acts of violence; instead, she supported herself and fed her habit by doing the only thing she knew.

She once made the statement of not knowing what her life would have been if she had grown up somewhere else.  I don’t know where she spent her childhood but I suspect the ‘where’ doesn’t matter as much as the ‘how’.

Her addiction to cocaine was severe and her body suffered horribly.  She was friendly and gentle natured and it pains me to imagine the type of woman she might have been had drugs not found her.

************

She was barely clothed, thrashing about in an alcove in the 400 Powell St.  Frantic, literally climbing the walls and screaming to ‘get them off her’, she rolled her head back and wailed.

Blood was smeared across concrete and glass.  When she turned her oil-drop eyes on me and begged Please, I was not sure what to do.

Her assailants were not visible and I spoke to her in a soft, low voice in an effort to get her to calm down.  Eventually, she stopped clawing her way up the cinderblock and turned to me, her arms extended so the raw, bleeding wounds covering her forearms and face were visible.  She took a few stilted steps in my direction before she collapsed, and when I rolled her on to her side, her body was limp with fatigue.

The paramedics were there in moments, giving Roxanne oxygen, IV fluids and warmth in the form of an ambulance gurney and a blanket.  She was semi-conscious, giving in to the comfort of the concerned people around her.

Or so I thought.

************

Roxanne’s mouth drew down in a frown and her eyes widened.  She brought both of her hands up to her face, a guttural moan issuing from deep within her chest when she hooked her thumb into a claw and tore at her other hand, ripping flesh and making the hairs on the back of my neck stiffen.  Her thumb was inside and under the skin of her other hand, blood starting to pour, when she looked up at the paramedics and asked them to make the spiders leave her alone.

“Get them off me!”

When one of the paramedics swatted her hand with his gloved one, Roxanne turned her attention to her forearm.  She gripped the edge of a fresh, jagged wound and pulled, the sound of tearing skin like the tearing of thick fabric.  I think I yelled for someone to stop her, and the gloved paramedic grabbed Roxanne’s hands, pinning them to her chest so she could no longer harm herself.

As it was, Roxanne was handcuffed and her hands wrapped in thick layers of gauze to stymie her fingers from their frantic picking.  She was sedated and it was only then I observed the wounds all over her body.  Her scalp, her side, her thigh, her genitals.

The poor woman had about picked herself to death trying to free herself from the spiders and bugs she thought were crawling underneath her skin.

Roxanne was rushed to the hospital.  I rode with her in the ambulance and stayed with her until she was admitted to medical care.

************

I may have seen her once or twice after that, but I can’t be sure.

Every time, I do a double-take and the would-be Roxanne is gone.  I don’t remember what her last name was, and in truth, I’m not sure I want to.

Like so many others, it is most likely she has been lost to drug addiction, her laugh ringing like the bells of other women I have known, all falling to the needle, the predator and the serial killer.

“Breathe, damn it,” my partner said, and thumped the man’s chest for the third time.

We had been walking our beat in the Downtown Eastside when a woman told us of a man unconscious from a drug overdose.  We were directed to this alley, where we found the man slumped in a filthy alcove. 

A needle was stuck in his arm and his head lolled to the side when we tried to wake him, and I knew the man was dying.  We pulled him from the alcove and radioed for an ambulance.

Kneeling beside the motionless form, my partner pressed his fingers to the side of the man’s neck and threw me a grim look. He couldn’t find a pulse.  My partner wiped the back of wrist across his mouth in an unconscious gesture.

We could not perform mouth to mouth on this man.  He was an IV drug user in an area where Hepatitis C and HIV were rampant, and we could simply not risk becoming infected. 

I felt horrible for it.

Joining my partner in a crouch, I looked closer.  The man’s face was hard from years of drug use and covered in grizzled stubble.  Scabs scattered across his cheeks, and a lock of greasy hair fell across his brow.  He could have been anyone. 

Surely, though, he was someone.

He was someone’s son.  He had loved, played, been a part of someone’s life. He had fears, goals, likes and dislikes.  His addiction did not make him inhuman, it only made him addicted.

If not for the addiction he could have been me.

Faint sirens floated on the air, coming closer, and I placed my own fingers on the side of his neck.  His skin was warm and supple, but there was no heartbeat.  My hands moved to his chest. 

Stillness.  

I looked away and willed the ambulance to hurry. He could not die like this, in squalor.  In the cold, outside, lying mere feet from a rank mound of human waste.  It was not right. 

Gripping the man under his arms, I cradled his head against my belly and dragged him into the center of the lane, away from the unspeakable.  My partner helped me lower him to the ground, and we stood watch.

Within moments, an ambulance came into the lane and the paramedics were a blur of controlled chaos. The man’s clothing was cut off, heart rate monitors were attached to his pale chest, and a breathing tube was forced into his airway. 

A pair of gloved hands with laced fingers pushed his ribcage up and down, up and down, up and down.

A flash caught my eye as one medic produced a small glass vial. She dipped a needle into the cap and withdrew a syringe full of liquid.  Quickly checking the amount, she plunged it into the man’s arm, forcing the dose of Narcan into the man’s veins.

We waited.  Hands pumped ribs. The breathing tube made a low sucking noise. Seconds felt like hours. Minutes felt like forever.

Then, as if rising for the first time, the man’s eyelids fluttered and then flew open as he drew in a great rasping breath.  His hand clawed at the breathing tube, and he succeeded in pulling it out. 

The initial breath was followed by a second, and then a third.

His eyes, a startlingly beautiful blue, blinked up at us, and tears coursed from the corners to be lost in the hair at his temples as he tried to fathom where and who he was.

Another one, brought back from certain death.

You did not ask for this life, to be treated like this.  To be a slave to the desires of those who stop and speak to you, their features cast like stone in the glare of a dome light.

And still, your own needs drive you out to lay waste to a habit that has overcome.

 ————————- 

Vice Squad.  Working to put pimps in jail and to get sex trade workers headed towards a life of safety and opportunity.

I will always have time for those who walk our streets, but the pimps are the reason I turned down a position in Vice a few years ago.  At the time I could not imagine trying to ‘befriend’ a pimp in an interview. At the time I found their behaviour so incredibly disgusting that I did not trust myself.

#

Last winter, I managed to get into a local coffee bar just before closing.  The girl behind the counter asked if I wanted a free sandwich along with my beverage as the sandwiches were at the ‘sell by’ date.  If I didn’t want one the food was going to end up in the garbage.  I could have my pick, she said, as there were half a dozen slated for disposal.

“No, thank you,” I said.  I bid her good night, took my coffee and headed out to my police car. 

And there I sat.

A minute later, the girl answered my knock at the locked glass door.

“I’d like to take you up on your offer,” I said, “Can I have all of them?”

#

In the following hours I scoured the Downtown Eastside looking for sex trade workers to give the sandwiches to.  I couldn’t approach a woman standing in a crowd, as she would surely be beaten for ‘ratting out to the cops’.  I  checked and rechecked for pimps, not wanting to bring any harm while trying to bring a little good. 

It took forever.

Most were grateful.  I stayed and chatted with one woman for twenty minutes.  Her children were three, six and seven.  All wards of the Ministry.  She hoped to clean up.  I gave her my ear and left her a part of my heart.  It still stings.

Another woman ran from me, her eyes huge and her hands pressed up to her face as if I were the proverbial boogie monster come to catch her from under the bed of her childhood.

#

I never drive through the Skids without really looking.  I keep track of who is still there, who the newcomers are, and who have fallen to the needle or the serial killer. 

Georgina. She had the most wonderful laugh.  Hearty and from the belly.  She is gone now, as is her friend Teresa.  One fell prey, and the other I covered with a sheet, her lifeless body on the floor, the needle marks still fresh in her arm.

#

All of this serves as a reminder – these wome have lives, loved ones, friends and dreams.  We had best not forget.

Two nights ago I was flagged down by security at the bus station.  A homeless man had been escorted out after causing a ruckus inside.  Security said the man was too intoxicated to care for himself and pointed him out as he shambled across the adjoining park.

After radioing in, I got out of my truck and walked after the man.  His gait was stilted and crooked, his grey sweatpants were soiled, and it had been weeks since he had seen a comb or a bath.  When he stopped at my request, his eyes were in a vacant stare somewhere above my head, his mouth agape and framed by a mucus encrusted moustache.  Dirt and grime were caked into every crease of his face, his clothing stiff with filth.  Curled into the crook of his arm was a cola bottle half filled with a clear liquid.  Clenched in his other fist was a balled up rag. 

When I asked him his name, he parroted my question, and then brought his fist up to his mouth and inhaled deeply of the fumes rising from the rag clenched within.  A thin line of drool dropped from his lip to string through his beard.  His eyes found mine, yet they didn’t.  He lowered his hand and poured the liquid from the bottle onto the rag, spilling some onto his sleeve.  The smell of the poison was enough to rock me back on my heels.

Paint thinner.

It has been years since I’ve interacted with someone in his condition, years since I’ve walked the beat in the Downtown Eastside. 

And yet nothing changes.