Victoria mother ‘forced’ to buy street drugs to save addicted daughter’s life

A Victoria mother says she had to make an unimaginable decision to help save her daughter’s life.

Correne Antrobus bought street drugs to help treat her daughter’s drug addiction.

“Which is just such a foreign thought but we knew we had to get her something until she could get on the program,” Antrobus said.

Homeless for about a year, her 27-year-old daughter recently reached out for help – it was a small window of opportunity.

“It was on a Saturday night so we took her to the methadone clinic first thing Monday morning and we were told it would be at least a month wait to get in. So we panicked because she’s using and she’s starting to get sick,” Antrobus said.

Methadone is commonly used to help those addicted to opioids detox from the drugs.

Another drug called Suboxone can be used to treat opioid addictions, and the Province has recently made it more accessible, but Antrobus said it didn’t work for her daughter.

“It did not work. She did do that before and went back on the methadone,” she said.

A limited number of B.C. physicians can prescribe methadone because they need to get federal exemption.

“As it stands now, physicians have to go through a course that they may have to travel to unless they’re lucky enough it’s the one course per year outside of Vancouver that’s in their town,” director of the B.C. Centre on Substance Use, Evan Wood said.

The B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons has been pushing to have more B.C. doctors trained to prescribe methadone.

For Angela Elder, director and counsellor at the Outreach Services Clinic in Victoria, it’s a plea because the street drug alternative is far too dangerous.

“It could be watered down, it could be cough syrup with a little fentanyl in it, or it could be jacked up with something else so they don’t really know if they’re actually taking methadone or not because it’s not coming straight from a pharmacy,” Elder said.

A provincial opioid treatment program will come into effect in June and part of that plan, Wood said, is making methadone more accessible.