Going Nowhere: Ambivalence about Drug Treatment during an Overdose Public Health Emergency in Vancouver

Original research
by
Fast, Danya

Release Date

2021

Geography

Canada

Language of Resource

English

Full Text Available

Yes

Open Access / OK to Reproduce

Yes

Peer Reviewed

Yes

Objective

The declaration of an overdose public health emergency in Vancouver has generated an “affective churn” of intervention across youth‐focused drug treatment settings, including the expanded provision of opioid agonist therapy. In this article, I track moments when young people became swept up in the momentum of this churn and the future possibilities that treatment seemed to promise

Findings/Key points

I also track moments when treatment and what happened next engendered a sense of stagnation, arguing that the churn of intervention ensnared many youth in rhythms of starts and stops that generated significant ambivalence toward treatment. The colonial past and present deepened this ambivalence among some Indigenous young people and informed moments of refusal. Youth's lives unfolded through but also around treatment programs, in zones of the city where drug use could generate a sense of momentum that was hooked not on futures, but on the sensorial possibilities of the now.

Keywords

Wrap-around services
About PWUD
Social services
Housing
Illegal drugs
Youth
Indigenous
Substitution/OAT