At the age of 15, Guy Felicella began his substance abuse and addiction journey with cocaine, progressing to heroin and crystal meth, driven by unresolved childhood traumas; entrenched in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, he recounts two decades of rough sleeping, cyclical incarcerations, and a lack of rehabilitation. Amidst the late 1990s HIV/AIDS outbreak, Felicella, with over 55 drug-related convictions, found a turning point in 2013 when an overdose at Insite, a Downtown Eastside drug consumption site, led to a nurse’s intervention, catalyzing a desire for change that ultimately spared his life, marking the beginning of a transformative journey recounted after Insite’s 20th-anniversary celebration in September 2023.
“I told her I wanted to stop living like this, but I did not know how to do it. We sat there and worked out a plan.” Over the years, Felicella used Insite more than 4000 times.1
Read the full article about how he conquered substance abuse and addiction and began a new life here.
References
- Burki, T. (2023). Drug consumption rooms: 20 years of Insite. The Lancet, 402(10415), 1819–1820. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(23)02559-x
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