A Guelph, Ont. teenager who says sheâs been struggling with drug addiction for two years shares her fear of losing her life to a drug laced with a deadly dose of fentanyl.
Kristen Bolt says she has been hooked since she was first injected with opioids two years ago, at a time when she had become homeless and dropped out of school. Since then, Bolt says she has overdosed three times from opioid use and has had to be resuscitated twice.
âI let him inject me and then, ever since the first one, it was just⌠you do it once and thatâs it, youâre addicted,â Bolt told CTV Kitchener.
The 19-year-old, who says sheâs now addicted to heroin, fears the growing presence of the more potent fentanyl mixed in the drugs she purchases.
âYou donât know â youâre kind of playing Russian roulette with it, so thatâs the scary part,â said Bolt.
on opioids says that fentanyl is 40 times more potent than heroin. According to the Ontario coronerâs office, out of 700 opioid related deaths in 2015, 30 per cent involved fentanyl.
Nevertheless, Const. Buzz Dean with the Guelph Police says arresting addicts is not a solution.
âThis is an issue that we canât arrest our way out of,â Const. Dean told CTV Kitchener. âItâs a very human issue.â
Bolt says she has come up with a system to test the drugs she is using for the presence of fentanyl: she takes a small amount at first, and waits for the high. Then she takes the rest. She also says she has started carrying around a naloxone spray that can temporarily reverse an opioid overdose, just in case.
Quitting is hard, however, as withdrawal quickly brings stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhea and severe discomfort that propels her to use again.
âYou get to a point where youâre like, âI canât stop, because if I could I would have already,ââ Bolt said, describing her worry that she wonât live past her 35th birthday.
âAt this point I canât picture myself being happy without the drugs,â said Bolt. âIf I knew that there was happiness beyond that, then maybe⌠yeah.â
With a report from CTV Kitchenerâs Allison Tanner