Fentanyl abuse in rural Ottawa serves as warning for Canadian communities

OTTAWA – An old prescription drug has found a fresh name and new users in some Canadian communities.

In the rural Ottawa suburb of Manotick, it hasn’t taken long for estimates of teenagers using “patch” to reach into the dozens.

Patch is the innocuous label given to Fentanyl, a lethal opiate that has swept through the picture-perfect, affluent suburb with devastating consequences.

At least one teenager has died, many others are addicted, and the community is starting to speak out.

“We’d do anything. We’d beg, borrow or steal. I did some things I can never take back,” an 18-year-old recovering fentanyl addict told Global News on the condition of anonymity. “I robbed my best friend’s house. That’s how bad it was.”

The young man went from a good student and star athlete to a petty thief and junkie in just over a year – all thanks to patch.

“There’s no point in lying,” he said of the high. “It’s the best feeling ever.”

The prescription drug gets its nickname from the clear patch it comes on. It’s a painkiller 100 times stronger than morphine and is used to treat people with cancer or chronic pain.

The drug is safely administered over the course of several days by a patch placed on the patient’s arm. But recreational users cut up the patch to smoke, inject or chew the gel inside.

“It looks so innocent, so we started doing it,” he said. “We didn’t even know there was a physical dependency to opiates.”

But soon, he was hooked and started doing whatever he had to do to stay high and avoid a painful withdrawal. One of his biggest regrets was turning to crime, stealing televisions, money, or gold to get a hit – activities that landed him in jail.

“This drug just took over my life. Me and my friends, we just lost ourselves,” he said.

The cost was much higher for another teen.

Fentanyl’s lethal consequences

Tyler Campbell, 17, died in August 2012 of a Fentanyl overdose.

People close to Campbell said he only used the drug a few times, but that was enough.

“You can’t just try it once,” said Tyler’s mother Joanne Campbell. “There are deadly consequences from just trying it.”

The drug is not evenly distributed on the patch, so one piece can contain a huge dose and another just trace amounts. If a user gets the wrong piece, they can die.

Campbell said her son was a good kid, who held down a job at Tim Hortons, and loved playing hockey.

After hearing about patch, Campbell warned her son not to do it. She said he assured her he wouldn’t.

Two weeks later she got a horrifying phone call: “They tried to wake him up and he was cold and blue.”

Fentanyl raises alarms in other Canadian communities

It’s a tragedy that’s serves as a warning for other Canadian communities.

“If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere,” said Lisa MacLeod, who represents Manotick in Ontario’s legislature. “It’s a village of very decent, hardworking people, law-abiding citizens and people who contribute to our economy in the downtown sector, and live out here for a great retreat.”

Already, there have been Fentanyl-related deaths in Winnipeg, Sarnia, Ont. and Belleville, Ont.

Other Ontario communities like Toronto, Windsor, Peterborough, are also raising alarm bells about Fentanyl abuse.

Further west, British Columbian health researchers found opiate overdoses including Fentanyl happen at the same rate as drunk-driving deaths in the southeast region of the province.

Just down the road from Manotick, another community has lost one of its own.

Jay Bilodeau grew up in the small village of Richmond, Ont. where he chased his dreams of becoming a professional golfer.

It all came crashing down in August 2010 when Bilodeau came to his parents and admitted he was hooked on Fentanyl and needed help.

“He wanted to get his life back,” said his mother Janet Bilodeau.

Faced with waiting lists everywhere and the terror of unassisted withdrawal, Bilodeau decided to try methadone treatment.

He died of a Fentanyl overdose on March 28, 2011, just three days before he was scheduled to get his first dose of methadone.

In Manotick, attention started to focus on the reports of drug use at the local high school in September 2011.

Sarah Mott, a teenager who goes to the school, said drugs, including patch, could be found in the ceiling tiles of the bathrooms.

“Everyone pretty much had access to (drugs) all the time,” she said.  

When a rash of robberies hit the affluent community, police started to put the pieces together – tracing many of the break-ins back to Fentanyl users looking for cash to pay for a fix.

“This was a drug two to three years ago, if you were to ask the average officer what Fentanyl was, we had no idea. It just swept into an area that we would never have predicted would have happened,” said Ottawa Police Staff Sgt. Kal Ghadban.

Now police are looking for the sources of the drug. Stories from teens that use the drug are varied, but Ghadban has heard of pharmacy thefts, dumpster-diving for used patches, and purchases from dealers or prescription users.

“I want it off the streets. I don’t want another mother to go through what we’ve had to go through,” Campbell said.

Her son’s death shocked the community into action. Earlier this month, residents packed a local church to ask police, doctors and counselors about the drug and to find help.

While concerns remain about the source of the drug, local availability of treatment and shortage of residential treatment beds, the community is focused on building awareness.

“Students at 18 should be starting the next chapter of their life. They shouldn’t be worried about dealing with an addiction because they made a decision they weren’t aware about,” MacLeod said.

That’s exactly what the recovering addict is trying to do. He’s currently doing methadone treatment, has finished high school and is planning on applying to university.

“Seeing what I’ve done and where it’s taken me, I would not do it again,” he said.