‘It’s taking more lives than COVID,’ says grieving dad of B.C.’s fentanyl epidemic

A Langley father is sharing the heartbreaking story of his daughter’s death in the hopes of putting a face to the province’s other deadly epidemic.

“My world has never been the same. She was my one and only daughter,” John Butler told Global News.

Butler’s daughter Olivia, 21, in October, one of thousands of British Columbians who have died after taking drugs tainted with fentanyl.

Butler is upfront about his daughter’s lengthy struggles — he first learned Olivia was taking heroin when she was just 16.

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“I tell you, the sky crashed down on me,” he said.

“We had a lot of issues with her at home, a lot of fighting, a lot of yelling, and the fighting escalated.”

The family tried everything, from methadone to multiple rehab centres.

But he said finding resources for a teen girl fighting addiction proved harder than expected and ended up costing the family more than $100,000 over the course of three years.

“We thought there would be multiple opportunities to enroll her with counsellors or clinics,” he said. “But there was hardly any.”

Eventually the family found a lifeline in Langley’s Come As You Are rehab facility, through which Olivia landed a job and kicked off more than a year of sobriety.

“She blossomed back into that young girl that we had lost,” Butler said.

“She got so good, in fact, she had bounce in her step, her complexion was coming back, she was working a job, she was helping other girls that were coming in.”

But it didn’t last. Butler said Olivia split up with her boyfriend recently, and she began using again.

Two weeks ago Butler went to check on her at her apartment and was faced with every parent’s nightmare.

“The minute I saw the colour of her skin my worst fears jumped into my mind, but I was hoping I was wrong,” he said through tears.

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“And I walked up to her, and I made another noise, and I could see she was unresponsive, and I touched her and I knew, I knew that she was gone.”

More than 1,200 people have died of overdose in British Columbia this year, a situation experts say has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis.

The already-tainted drug supply has become even more toxic, while social distancing has increased the odds people will use them alone.

In Olivia’s case, it also meant reduced human contact, as her support meetings moved online.

The province needs to get serious about getting fentanyl off the streets, Butler said.

That belief has prompted him to make the difficult conversion from a skeptic to a supporter of safe supply, the controlled distribution of “clean” drugs to people with addictions.

“The more I talk to people the more I would have to agree that would have to be the possible solution,” he said.

“It’s taking more lives than COVID-19 is right now.”

He also called for free or affordable and immediate treatment on demand for young people.

“I’m just so sad for any parent out there that has to go through this,” he said.

“I just wish that I could have my daughter back.”