...In September 2016, Cooper was nicknamed “Patient Zero”
in an experimental program initiated by PHS Community Services Society (PHS), a nonprofit that operates the supportive-housing building where she lives. Twice a day, Cooper receives doses of hydromorphone, a prescription painkiller that’s better known by one of its brand names, Dilaudid. Hydromorphone is a powerful opioid that’s
similar enough to heroin that it eliminates the feelings of withdrawal that Cooper once feared. More than that, access to a guaranteed supply safe from contamination has brought stability to Cooper’s life, enough to reconnect with family and take a part-time job—the first in her life. “And you know you’re not going to die from it,” she said.
The injection-hydromorphone program primarily runs out of one of PHS’s housing projects called the Molson Hotel. In the early 1900s, it operated as a bank. With a stone exterior and the sort of grand trimmings that adorn buildings of that period, the Molson brings a nostalgic elegance to its location at the corner of Main and East Hastings, the most notorious drug market in Canada.
...
But what kind of user is the typical patient in this program? “You have to have failed with other treatment models [such as methadone] a certain amount of times,” Kasting explained. “And if someone is perceived to be at a very high risk of overdose—someone who is overdosing a lot—those are also people we want to get into the program.”
The benefits extend beyond the individual. “The guys are shoplifting less,” Kasting said. “Women don’t have to engage in as much sex work or be as reliant on questionable relationships.”
Then there’s the program’s success in reducing overdoses. On the other side of the wall, the Molson OPS has seen more than 1,180 overdoses since it opened in September 2017. Six hundred and sixty-five of them required naloxone. Not one of them was fatal. The number of people who have died at any of Vancouver’s supervised-injection sites is zero. It’s a remarkable statistic. But with PHS’s hydromorphone program, there’s a number that’s even more impressive: Since it began, in September 2016, it’s never experienced an overdose, period.
