A B.C. mother whose son died from a fentanyl overdose earlier this month has posted a message on Facebook as a warning to others that fentanyl can kill anyone and it doesn’t discriminate.
Jackie McDonald-Read posted the message in the Facebook group Fentanyl Victims – We Remember to tell the story about her 38-year-old son Travis.
He died on Jan. 1.
His mother Jackie says he had been struggling with drugs for a long time and she believes he started using when he was 17. She says he had a bad experience with acid and “was never the same.”
She believes Travis started using more drugs to mask his paranoia and his brain damage led to mental illness.
Even though Travis attended treatment, Jackie says his mental illness was not treated and he returned to using drugs.
Finally, Travis got some help for his mental health because he was forced to. At first, I believed there was a little improvement, but another problem rose to the surface and that is that many mental health medications take away a person’s ability to feel anything.
Travis would complain that he felt nothing inside, it was difficult for him not to feel emotions. He often described the meds as making him feel dead inside. This turned him back to drugs because he said that the drugs helped him to feel something… another vicious cycle begins.
Jackie says she wanted to write this note about her son to warn everyone that fentanyl is without prejudice.
It does not care if you are white, First Nations, Asian or darker skinned. It does not care if you are on income assistance, or work in labour, or if you are a professional, or even if you are rich. If you do Fentanyl, or a drug that is laced with Fentanyl it will KILL you.
Fentanyl did not care that Travis was a kind, respectful, charismatic and loving person. Nor that he had family and friends who love him.
Fentanyl does not care if you are an addict. You may go to a party and do any kind of drug just for fun that night and the results could be the same as it was for Travis.
Travis was left on life support with severe brain damage and Jackie says when Travis was in the ICU there were others who were on life support due to overdosing from fentanyl.
Jackie says she would like people to know three things about fentanyl and that it can kill everyone.
1) Do not judge. A death from Fentanyl can happen to anyone who uses any kind of recreational drug at any time. You are not exempt because you are not an addict, or are just using drugs this one night, or you are a working person, or even if you’re rich. Fentanyl will kill anyone at anytime when bought off the streets and can be laced into any other drugs.
2) Please educate yourself about Fentanyl and then educate your children or anyone you care about so it might not happen to them. If you have lost someone you love or know, talk about it and let people know. The more people hear it coming from sources other than the news [the] more people will be able to see being more real and that it can affect them too. There were more deaths in the Fraser Valley from Fentanyl than Vancouver so don’t think living in the country will protect you. LEARN, TALK and SPREAD the word. Get everyone talking about it so everyone will start to be afraid… because they should be afraid. GET INVOLVED!
3) If you cannot feel empathy for addiction then at least feel compassion. People with addictions are REAL people with real feelings and real problems and deserve to be loved and cared for like any other human being. Yes, addiction comes with many hardships on family and can wreak havoc in communities and society. Addiction ruins lives but we can’t hide from it or pretend it doesn’t exist. We need to become part of the solutions. WHY?
Jackie says she wanted to write the post because of online comments about how the government keeping people alive on life support, who had overdosed from fentanyl, didn’t deserve it.
“The disregard for human life blew me away,” she writes. “I guess people who make these types of comments don’t understand that fentanyl does not discriminate. This isn’t about addiction, this is about a deadly drug on our streets that is killing anyone who dares to even cross anywhere near its path. Children are dying from this! STOP judging and start becoming part of the solutions.”
To read the full posting, go to the Facebook group.
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