Students battle drug addiction

A pair of Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School students spoke about their addictions during a recent prescription drug abuse conference in Thunder Bay.
“I am a Grade 11 student at DFC and I use Oxycontins,” said Anita Meekis, a student from Sandy Lake who started using codeine and Percocets three years ago when she was 16. “I’m just a teenager and I have (had) a lot of issues for the last few years.”
Meekis described problems she had with her parents, her boyfriend and her friends.
“The only support I had on my reserve was the healing camp, but I did not attend because I was ashamed of getting help,” Meekis said during the Chiefs Forum on Prescription Drug Abuse Nov. 15. “I didn’t want certain people to know what I was doing (and) what kind of drugs I was using.”
Meekis said she feels bad most of the time, explaining she loves traditional dancing and singing but cannot touch her regalia or hand drums while using prescription drugs.
“I am a fancy shawl dancer and I am a female powwow singer,” Meekis said. “I want my traditional life back. I want to be able to dance and I want to be able to sing again.”
Meekis said she also wants a better relationship with her parents and friends.
“I want my old friends back,” Meekis said. “I want to be drug free.”
Joanne Beardy, a Grade 9 student from Bearskin Lake, also spoke about her prescription drug addiction.
“I started off using Oxy’s when they were first around,” Beardy said. “My cousins would always tell me to buy them for them and they would give me a line. They never told me about the withdrawals and the withdrawals are very brutal.”
Beardy said she wants help to get off prescription drugs.
Pelican Falls First Nations High School principal Darryl Tinney said while people may have the impression Pelican Falls is a safe school, it has the same issues any other high school has within the province.
“We do have drug issues,” Tinney said. “Some of the stories we have heard are just downright terrible, from some of their parents having sold everything (to obtain) their next pill. Some of our students have spent more than $3,000 from the summertime to now on their drug habits.”
Communities looking for treatment options
Tinney said prescription drug awareness and help for those who are addicted is provided at Pelican Falls.
“Once we offer them the help, that seems to be one of our biggest challenges,” Tinney said. “It’s hard to get that help and go through it because the withdrawals are just too great for them.”
Tinney said alcohol and marijuana incidents among students have “dropped sharply” this past year at Pelican Falls.
“Our biggest challenge is you can’t smell the pills,” Tinney said. “They are not as easy to find and I know a number of our students, in talking to the student body, are switching that to their drug of choice.”
The Chiefs Forum on Prescription Drug Abuse was held Nov. 15 through videoconference. It was facilitated by Poplar Hill and the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority with Jim Morris, SLFNHA executive director, as chairman and Eabametoong Chief Lewis Nate as co-chairman.
Videoconference participants included Nishnawbe Aski Nation Deputy Grand Chief Mike Metatawabin, a number of NAN chiefs and representatives from a number of tribal councils, Health Canada, Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre, Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, Thunder Bay Police Service, and Wasaya.
Wasaya Airways’ John D. Beardy described the airline’s plans to install baggage and cargo screening machines to screen baggage and shipments at the Thunder Bay, Sioux Lookout, Pickle Lake and Red Lake airports.
“The plan here will affect all the communities we service,” Beardy said. “We plan to screen every bag and every shipment that goes through the airline.”
Beardy said airlines serving northern Manitoba are now beginning to screen passengers as well.
“The security personnel screen passengers using technology to detect metal or chemicals or dangerous goods,” Beardy said. “I think we will be looking at that as well.”
Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug Chief Donny Morris brought up health issues and deaths due to prescription drug abuse.
“As chiefs, one of the things we can’t overlook is in our cemetery we have quite a large (number of) small graves,” Morris said. “In my community, there are confirmed cases of hepatitis C. With those, HIV is not far behind as we’re told.”
Morris said there are other issues besides the people who are using prescription drugs that need to be looked at and discussed.
“You have to look at, as I said, premature births, what’s triggering them, and prostitution and hepatitis C, needle sharing,” Morris said. “A lot of these communities don’t believe needles are an issue but they are.”
He said syringes are being sold in his community for $50 each and the diabetics are asking where all the needles are going.
Sandy Lake Chief Adam Fiddler emphasized the prescription drug abuse issue in the NAN region is not due primarily to prescribed drugs, but due to prescription drugs being illegally brought into and sold in the communities by community members.
“The problem is not that our people are being over-prescribed with Oxys and Percs,” Fiddler said. “The problem is people are buying it on the streets in Winnipeg and Thunder Bay as a street drug in bulk quantities and it’s getting into our community. It’s not necessarily over-prescribing, it’s being sold on the black market out there.”
Fiddler said research needs to be carried out on the affects of long-term prescription drug abuse.
“We know the social implications, we know the effects it has on families, the devastation it is causing in our community when people are addicted to these drugs,” Fiddler said. “What we don’t know yet is the physical effect after five years if somebody is either snorting or injecting Oxys every day. What is the long-term effect physically?”
Fiddler also expressed interest in the Suboxone treatment for prescription drug abuse brought up during the videoconference.
“I’d like to learn more about this Suboxone,” Fiddler said. “From what I’m hearing, I’m interested in being one of the pilot sites ... to see if it can help out our people.”
The treatment is available, on an out-patient basis in large centres in Canada including Toronto, to treat pain killer addiction and abuse of opiates with minimal disruptions to work, social and family life.
The Chief’s Forum on Prescription Drug Abuse concluded with the testimony of a Sandy Lake prescription drug healing camp client.
“He gave a testimony and it was so powerful,” said Tina Kakepetum-Schultz, one of the organizers of the forum. “He just kept thanking the chief and council for bringing a program like the healing camp to Sandy Lake.”
Kakepetum-Schultz said the client and his wife had only known each other while under the influence of prescription drugs and their daily conversation from the time they got up was where could they get their next fix.
“He said he brought so much pain and shame to his family,” Kakepetum-Schultz said. “He said when he and his wife attended that healing camp, they were taught to understand how the drugs were affecting them, their bodies and their lives and the whole family.”
Kakepetum-Schultz said the client saw the light one day while out on the land with the Elders.
“He said the Elders made him get up early in the morning before daylight and he said he was on the lake when the sun came up,” Kakepetum-Schultz said.
“That was when he felt something stirring inside him. He said his spirituality had woken up and he could see the beauty of the sun coming up. He said that is when his life began again.”