When you bring a child home from the hospital, you can't look at them with the thought that they're going to battle something you won't be able to help them through. I heard the honourable member talking about her children having strep throat. I understand that, because my son had been sick, as well. When they move to the use of substances that they battle.... Our other children have used substances, as well, but they don't battle them.
Gord asked a question. I'll go quickly.
My view has completely changed. John, as an alcoholic, has been sober for 38 years. We talked openly about what substance use is like. I was certain our children were not going to follow that same hard path. I really fought against Ryan using substances, even though I was the mother who would pick him up if he'd had too much to drink, then not admonish him, because my siblings and cousins had all done this in their adolescent phase, as well. I now know that substance use, when it becomes chronic, is not a choice. The number of people we met in recovery facilities Ryan had been to.... People talked about it being their eighth time there. That's the heartache people went through. It's not the fault of the person, even though it feels like it when we put that judgment on them.
I really wish we didn't use the word “overdose”, because it's not an overdose. When Ryan was 16 and went to a New Year's Eve party, he ended up with alcohol poisoning. It's called “alcohol poisoning”, but everything else is called an “overdose”. We had the coroner change Ryan's death certificate to say that he died from toxicity due to a substance. You can't call it an overdose, because people are not ingesting what they think they are ingesting. The amount of toxicity in the drugs is so high and inconsistent that users don't know what they're putting in their bodies. I hear the word “fentanyl”. Fentanyl is not the only drug being put in that is killing our loved ones.
The drug toxicity is also impacting people who are unhoused, because they are constantly in a state of withdrawal from drug sickness. If the coffee you drank today had not had the right level of caffeine, which was replaced by other substances that made you ill, your body would still crave that caffeine. You would probably need more instances of it throughout the day, which is what is happening with drug toxicity now.