The human side of Ottawa's fentanyl crisis

Playing with fire: The faces of the fentanyl epidemicWarning: This video contains graphic content and explicit words A toxic drug supply. Increasing overdoses. A lack of support and housing. This is the human side of Ottawa's fentanyl crisis.It's 10:45 a.m. on a Tuesday in downtown Ottawa.

It's a life Jessica Currie couldn't have imagined for herself when she was younger. She said she's taken courses in graphic design and loves photography — she's an artist at heart. "After the fourth, fifth year of her being on the Earth with me, I had a moment of PTSD where everything kind of fell apart in my life and I was remembering past things that I shouldn't have remembered. But then I turned to a break as a mother and that break turned into her never coming back.""Then every time I injected it, I found myself to be passed out somewhere, being molested, raped, robbed, or almost frozen to death or in some comparable position," she said.

"I'm like, 'I can't breathe. I can't breathe.' So I reached over and I saw another Narcan. So I Narcan'ed myself.""If you don't use in the streets and you're dope-sick, you're vulnerable and you're not safe. You're basically gonna be on the ground twitching, convulsing. You're not gonna have the strength to move. You're gonna wanna vomit. You're gonna be shitting and pissing your pants.

The other day I tested my drugs and they were three per cent fentanyl, 97 per cent unknownso you don't know what you're putting in your veins.He's been using for a long time, starting with OxyContin, but while trying to get off those drugs, someone offered him a pharmaceutical fentanyl patch."It's a hole I can't fill up, every day I wake up I can't not think about.

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