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Bug in a Jar – Isolation 101

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Isolation 101: Bug in a Jar

I awoke from a dream. I was walking through sand. The weight of my body pulled me down. Was it quicksand? The feeling of entrapment jolted me.

It’s been 40 days and 40 nights without any human contact. It has become a physical thing, extending past the difficulty of the mental strife. I can feel it in my joints and in my bones. It actually hurts. My body has a new vibration, like a rough running carburetor. The functional machine I had been is broken.

I feel like a bug in a jar

If we are all energy, as I believe, it explains how this feels. It feels like dehydration of my soul. It feels like all of the energy has been sucked out of me through a straw. It feels like I am carrying a piano, that is carrying an elephant, that is carrying the world. There is simply no place for my wonderful, plentiful, bountiful energy to go, and with none coming in, that symbiotic exchange that is as natural as breathing is no longer happening.

Yet I am still this massive energy factory. I throw some of it into the world, hoping it will land somewhere good and needed. The rest rebounds off of my walls. Some simply drifts into the abyss.

At least before, I could be in a hot room with other yogis and we could let each other’s energy fuel our souls, like osmosis.

I am not appeased by zoom. I have all but stopped texting. I am not interested in television. I’m past the point of binging on anything, even cookies. There’s nothing that will soothe me. Nothing replaces people. Period.

I feel like a bug in a jar. Some bratty kid came along and put me in a jar. I am a bug in a jar. Sometimes the kid shakes the jar…

Sometimes I see a flash of light. It is not the sun. It is the hot, searing magnification of this situation.

I am a bug in a jar. My jailer plucked me out and pulled off all my limbs.  I am now a bug in a jar, with no limbs.

I did not expect the physical part of this isolation. How could I? I have talked to people about the various ways we are sheltered in place. Some people are alone, like me. Others have their family. Some have a roommate, or friend. Some are in a care home. In each scenario there are challenges, difficulties and obstacles. Because I have empathy, I can let myself imagine how hard it would be in a worst-case, or bad case version of any of them. There is no good place to be forced to isolate. Period.

I was deeply in need of a hug, or any simple human touch. People say at least knowing other people are in the same situation makes it better. At least knowing some people are worse off makes it better. These things are all true. But nothing makes it better. Period.

Yesterday, I reached my breaking point. I was proud of how I handled the complete loss of my yearly income due to the full stop cancellation of large live music events, which is how I make my living. I was proud of how I was handling being alone. I was proud I had not reverting to the default and repeat cycle of self-pity and pacifying. But then someone I love was admitted into the hospital. Now I’m a bug in a jar with no limbs and I can’t go be there. Even if I had my legs, it’s not allowed.

“…My jailer plucked me out and pulled off all my limbs…”

When I was struggling with isolation before this all happened, I gained many important skills for living better and coping during trying times, but I realized I did not have a crisis plan, despite having a plan for almost everything. I suppose you don’t know you need one, until you need one. I thought I knew the people I could ask for help, but I realized I was wrong. There were times I told friends I was struggling and they didn’t understand I needed help. Once I even used the actual words “I am in emotional distress” and eight months later I have still not heard from the person I said that to.

Yesterday I enacted my new crisis plan. This plan includes a list of friends I have previously and specifically asked to verify, “if I tell you I need help, will you believe me?”

I asked for help and the cavalry arrived. At first, I just explained what was wrong and was told it’s okay to cry, so I did. I. Then I was told everything is going to be okay, because you need to hear it will be okay. Later, the cavalry brought so many donuts, along with wine and take-out.

The cavalry also gave me a hug.

There’s no way to describe getting the one thing you’ve needed after more than 40 days of having no human contact. We knew there was a small risk in the hugs. But it was necessary to take the risk. You can’t leave a man down. You wouldn’t leave a person in the middle of the street as bus with no breaks hurtling towards them. You can’t leave the damsel tied to the tracks when the train is chugging towards her. Yesterday, I got a hug and some time, love and laughter with two friends who came to pick me up off the ground. I was told the mission was not just for me; they needed it too. I said we had to fill our collective souls. We need people. Period.

With all the rules we currently have in place, we can’t lose our basic human kindness. We can’t lose our compassion, and we need to have empathy for everyone and everything, even if we can’t possibly understand. I am not condoning the practice of breaking the two metre distancing rules, in fact I was following them to the letter without exception until I could not carry on without help. Yesterday required us to break them. I was a bug without limbs in a jar who was dying, and today I am just a little bit more myself.

I wrote this, so that’s a good sign.

Ilan Cooley is an Edmonton based entrepreneur and writer. She is a an avid traveller, rescue dog mama and advocate of kindness and community.

You can read a recent story featuring Ilan that was published in the Globe and Mail on April 27, 2020. Here is a a recent video story featuring Ilan and this topic on Global TV Edmonton.

Isolation 101

 

Ilan Cooley is an Edmonton-based entrepreneur and writer who proudly works in the live event industry.

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Community / 4 years ago

Bug in a Jar – Isolation 101

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Isolation 101

Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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