Ep. 169: Hydromorphone: A User's Story
Guest: Colin Ross
Heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil are all deadly drugs when the dose exceeds your body’s ability to metabolize them.
Anyone who uses these opioids knows the risks and they point out that won’t stop them from using. The need for the drug overrides caution. Withdrawal is painful and extremely hard to achieve if you are living on the streets, scrounging for food and trying to scrape together the 25 to 35 dollars a day you need to support your habit.
In BC, hydromorphone is available to a limited number of chronic heroin users. The SALOME and NAOMI trials provided evidence that treatment is effective in stabilizing users.
The BC Centre for Substance Use recently issued guidelines that are a continuum of care that include counselling, detox, withdrawal management services and the administration of injectable and oral treatment through medication.
Colin Ross is fortunate. He has been an addict for about 20 years. Now he’s receiving hydromorphone two times a day – a treatment he says allows him to stabilize and consider the future. We sat down with Colin for a Conversation That Matters about the opioid crisis, the hydromorphone IV treatment program, mental health, housing and the potential he hopes to realize.
