It’s a story Evelyn Pollock wished she’d never have to share.
It’s the story of her son’s struggles with addiction, on and off the streets, in and out of jail, the moments he seemed to be getting his life back on track — but a story that did not have a happy ending for the Pollock family.
But she did share the story of her son, Daniel, in a ballroom at Casino Rama packed with health-care professionals as well as politicians and law-enforcement officials involved in the fight against opioid addiction. And she held nothing back.
“We’re plugging holes, and the water’s pouring out from somewhere else,” Pollock said during Thursday’s ninth annual Care Connections Forum, organized by the North Simcoe Muskoka Local Health Integration Network (LHIN).
Pollock was the guest speaker during the forum’s “spotlight” session, called A Rising Tide: Stemming the Opioid Crisis from Multiple Perspectives.
Pollock’s son died of an accidental opioid overdose in the fall of 2017. He was 43.
“My son is a cog in the wheel, and he didn’t have to die. Not one more kid has to die, if we can figure this out,” she told OrilliaMatters in an interview this week. “His life was a terrible struggle, but I miss him. My husband misses him. His sister misses him.”
Daniel Pollock moved from Toronto, where the family used to live, to Orillia in 2014. He’d told his mother he’d had enough of the destructive life he was living. She told him he would have to seek help from the Canadian Mental Health Association. He did. He saw the same addictions counsellor for three years, their last visit having taken place the day before he died.
After years of panhandling, sleeping on the streets and taking various drugs, from cocaine and crack to heroin, he was ready to make a change. His parents were there for him every step of the way, assisting however they could without enabling him. They helped him secure a mobile home in town, where he tended to his garden and looked after T.J., a cat he’d adopted from the Toronto Humane Society.
Things were looking up. With addiction, though, looks can be deceiving.
A neighbour found Daniel Pollock dead in his bathroom on the morning of Sept. 15.
“He bought it. He got it. He used it. He died,” his mom said.
While she’d rather not have to share that type of experience publicly, that’s become Evelyn Pollock’s reality, and she realizes the importance of doing so.
“I can never save him now, but the community, as a whole, can make the decision to reach out to addicts and alcoholics and understand that they’re human,” she said.
After addressing the Care Connections Forum, she was asked by event facilitator Peter MacLeod what needs to be done to curb the crisis.
“First of all, awareness,” she responded.
Pollock also wants to see better and more effective support offered to those in need — long-term shelter, for example, to help halt the revolving door.
She said harm reduction and prevention should be priorities, too. And they are, according to Ontario’s chief medical officer of health.
David Williams told the audience Thursday the key goals of the province’s strategy include access to pain-management services, guidelines for appropriate prescription of opioids and access to harm-reduction services.
“It’s not a solution that can come from anyone’s desk at Queen’s Park in the Macdonald Block,” he said.
Rather, it is local and regional health-care providers and authorities that are needed to make a difference across the province, one being the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit.
The health unit is involved with the Simcoe-Muskoka opioid strategy — which also includes representation from municipalities, law enforcement, Indigenous communities and members of the education and mental health sectors — and a report is expected by the end of spring.
Solutions can’t come soon enough, according to Lisa Simon, the health unit’s associate medical officer of health, who provided some sad statistics.
Between January and October 2017, there were 68 opioid-related deaths in Simcoe-Muskoka — a 79 per cent increase from the previous year.
Between May and July of last year, there were 336 opioid-related deaths in the province, representing a 68 per cent increase.
The rate of opioid-related deaths in this region is “significantly higher” than the provincial average, Simon noted, and those in low-income areas are about four times more likely to experience the problem.
Data specific to Indigenous communities are not yet available, but that is in the works. That information will be welcomed by people like Kathy St. Amant, of the Georgian Bay Native Women’s Association, who leads the Red Road to Recovery program. While statistics will be helpful, she doesn’t need them to know there is a problem.
“We see broken family relationships, children that are taken by child welfare systems,” she said, adding the latter can add to the trauma of many in the Indigenous community who still have the scars of the Sixties Scoop and residential schools.
At the end of the opioid discussion Thursday, panel members — which included Pollock, Simon, St. Amant, Williams, OPP Det.-Insp. Jim Walker and Rebecca Van Iersel, vice-president clinical with the North Simcoe Muskoka LHIN — were asked to provide some final thoughts. Pollock took aim at pharmaceutical companies and said support needs to go beyond equipping people with naloxone and other drugs that are used to save someone who has overdosed on opioids.
“The bottom line is what they’re interested in,” she told the audience.
“We’re pouring money into antidotes,” she told OrilliaMatters earlier, “and it’s the pharmaceutical companies that created this.”
Pollock agreed with what Williams said — that the solution has to start at home.
“Remember that those who are addicted to alcohol or drugs are our neighbours,” she said. “We can’t ignore them.”
At Thursday’s event, Pollock was selling copies of her son’s memoir, Thirty-three Years to Conception: A Voice from the Street. She had bought him a tape recorder and asked him to dictate his story. She then transcribed it and had it published. From every book sold Thursday, Pollock will be donating $2 to the Canadian Mental Health Association in Simcoe County, and she will be matching those $2 donations. The book is available on Amazon.
