ADDICTIONS AWARENESS WEEK IN CANADA
Recently in November it was National Addictions Awareness Week in Canada. This awareness raising campaign falls on a different date every year, and often expands beyond the week with many programs. The NAWW seeks to highlight substance and health issues such as prevention, harm reduction, treatment, recovery and reducing the stigma around addiction. Each year there is a unique theme. This year’s in 2025 is “Anchoring Hope” — emphasizing optimism, connection, compassion, and evidence-based action in response to substance-use health challenges.
By encouraging social public discourse about the issues, the challenge of recovery transcends the personal into the collective field. This strengthens the support structures within the community to create a safety net for those who are struggling. The week also encourages policy and systemic responses. Through public campaigns and community events, NAAW also pushes for better funding, services, and harm-reduction strategies at governmental and community levels. That’s why I felt the need to put out some resources of my own.
The Influence of “The Downtown East-Side” (DTES), Vancouver, BC, Canada
As a resident of Vancouver, BC, Canada, I’ve been exposed to the opioid and drug crisis in a unique way through directly witnessing “The Vancouver Downtown East-Side”, well known as one of the most severely impacted urban neighbourhoods in North America for opioid overdose and toxic-drug deaths. This sectioned off area of the city is mostly filled with Indigenous, vulnerable, or marginalized — highlighting systemic inequalities, intergenerational trauma, and colonial legacy issues. The area is comparable with West Virginia, Kentucky, and other most affected parts of the USA, as a place where the magnitude and concentration of overdose deaths serve as a wake-up call to the entire continent.
Gabor Maté ◊ A Psychedelic Inspiration in Addiction Recovery from the DTES
Russell Brand won my affections (among other ways) by focusing on the promotion of Gabor Maté, a widely influential expert in addiction recovery, on several episodes of his podcasts. Gabor Maté spent over a decade working directly with people struggling with drug addiction, mental illness, housing instability and related issues in the neighbourhood Downtown Eastside (DTES) — which was the subject of his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. His career has brought forth so much in public speaking and writing, leading to his latest book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture.
His voice on the relevance of psychedelic plant medicine as an ally to addiction recovery, such as Iboga / Ibogaine, Ayahuasca and Psilocybin, has been a perfect compliment to his message which is especially like minded with my own views. He sees addiction, pain and suffering not as isolated personal failures but often as outcomes of traumatic social, cultural, or relational conditions — which invites compassion, systemic thinking, and social justice perspective. Also, his attention to the body–mind connection, memory, intergenerational trauma, and the spiritual /human dimension of suffering matches a worldview that understands healing as more than just physical or behavioral — but as deeply existential and communal.
The Coca Leaf Cafe ◊ Psychedelic Compassion in the DTES
As a Vancouver resident, I (like everyone else) have no way to avoid occasional exposure to the DTES, since it is very centrally located. In fact, it is an honour to have access to the grassroots real-world insights into the topic of compassion, harm reduction and recovery that this area of town provides.
Throughout my travels in the area, some exceptionally brilliant rays of hope and inspiration have caught my eye. One of these has been The Coca Leaf Cafe, a “coca‑culture themed cafe” offering coca‑leaf tea drinks (like “cocaccino”), and selling or promoting a variety of “plant medicines” / psychoactive substances such as coca leaf, kratom, peyote, mesclaine analog, psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, DMT, and more.
The shop is also next-door to a connected needle-exchange and harm reduction mini-centre, featuring together, educational resources on psychedelics and drug safety, and a gallery of visionary art and books / collectibles.
Though the law prohbits the sale of psychedelics, this beautiful café in the DTES openly runs under a business licence and has operated for years steadily without being shut down. Police have graciously explained their lack of total shut-down to the café (aside from occasional small raids) as a case of priority being needed upon much more serious crimes in the city, in the midst of very real opiate and other drug-violence crisis situations.
In context with the inspirational leadership of Gabor Maté and so many more in the field of psychedelic research for addiction and mental health recovery purposes, this has put Vancouver on the map as one of the most progressive cities in North America. All this has been a beautiful expression of common, universal, human love and quiet and sensitive activism, despite the very official lack of co-operation on psychedelic legal progress from our Liberal government.
As you will find in my other writings throughout this website, I myself am an Ayahuasqera - a master healer of psychedelic plant medicines of Peru in the traditional practices of the Shipibo-Conibo, granted with permission of their ancient culture. As well, as an artist particularly focused on the life of Kurt Cobain with a focus on addiction recovery in context with many stars, I have found this legal hangout spot to be quite an iconic gem.
- mention the psychedelic harm reduction approach of the coca cafe and the drug war = genoside sticker will go up with that, with some pictures of that cafe.
- mention the downtown east side and the hope in the shadows and megaphone publications that come out of there
- mention the flowers and my personal story that it was hard to do this archive because of my sister Mary
- talk about the theory that movies are a great way to process grief and raise awareness
- explore the challenges in processing certain important information about addictions awareness with examples
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