“These people don’t want to die,” a passionate Sophia Danai proclaims over the phone.
With Danai plotting a new album set to drop in September, the soulful Vancouver songstress has been staying relatively clear of the public eye. With the growing concern over fentanyl and the trail of overdose deaths left in its wake, however, it is not lost on Danai how imperative lending a hand now could be.
Enter her upcoming benefit show, organised and headlined by musician Jeremy Allingham, that sees Allingham and Danai joined by roots rocker Skyote on Friday, March 24 at The Biltmore Cabaret. Asked why raising money and awareness for the overdose crisis is important to Danai, the singer replies: “It's an opportunity to bring attention to an important cause by doing what I love to do. Jeremy and I went to high school together, so I would have said yes regardless, but it's an honour that I was asked to do it.”
Not having been directly affected by the veritable plague cast upon our city, Danai is still filled with compassion after having read about the staggering number of overdose deaths in BC – 922 in 2016 alone. "I want to help out where I can by raising funds – all of which will go to The Overdose Prevention Society,” she explains.
The Overdose Prevention Society (OPS) operates a pop-up – technically unsanctioned – harm reduction and overdose prevention trailer and tent in the Downtown Eastside. With the very legal (when prescribed) pharmaceutical fentanyl sweeping Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, the OPS has been taking measures to limit the frequency of deaths mainly associated with ingesting lethal amounts of the synthetic opioid, and subsists on donations to meet its daily operating costs.
Siding unwaveringly with OPS staff – composed primarily of volunteers trained in administering naloxone and CPR – Danai is at a loss as to how some people can still be opposed to treatment facilities and safe injection sites. “All the research, science and health authorities have said that harm reduction not only saves lives but improves them. There are safe injection places like Insite [that] have on-site naloxone kits saving lives, and they have controversy around them?” she asks. “I don't see how there can be an issue when they are saving people's lives. If they are going to do it [narcotics], there might as well be a [safe] place, because these people don't want to die,” she repeats.
Despite Danai’s dismay, there is still a large contingent of British Columbians who argue taxpayer money should not be going towards victims of drug overdose. Many people protest that the victim is to blame for having a dependency and that the overdoses are a result of “bad choices.” However, it can be said that the overwhelming majority of British Columbians overdosing on fentanyl were not looking to acquire the potent drug in the first place, and are thus unknowingly exposed to the chemical, said to be 50-100 times more efficacious than morphine.
“It's not like they are taking the drugs because they want to die. They are getting laced products,” Danai says. “It's such a tricky thing because it places all of the onus on the user, in a sense. ‘They overdosed’; meanwhile, these people took the same amount of what they thought they had ordered, but with such a small amount of this other thing [fentanyl] being deadly…,” she trails off, pensively.
Ultimately, the musician feels these people are victims of a malignant contamination, and if the tainted substances were not illegal, we would be talking about 922 homicides last year. “If you look at it like it is murder, and these people are continually getting poisoned, then that changes the whole conversation," she says.
“Let's be honest,” she adds, after a pause. “People experiment with drugs. We all have friends that recreationally use drugs. It's something that is seeping into our community through all of the corners. You think you are so far removed from something like this, but [now] it seems like it's everywhere.
“I don't get why there is such a stigma, or how there is still this idea that there is ever going to be a world where [drug use] never happens."
That reality is slowly seeping into public discourse. Dr. Carl Hart, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Columbia University who specialises in drug abuse and drug addiction, has stated on CNN and several other platforms that, "Drug use will be with us. There has never been a drug-free society. There never will be, nor should there be."
Which brings us back to compassion, and local musicians coming together for a cause.
“I don't claim to be an expert on what we should do, but you need to approach these kinds of things with compassion,” says Danai. “Compassion is missing from so many when dealing with a differing perspective. For me, it is a pursuit of how do I find my community and feel like I am making a small difference in my daily life? Not allowing it to make me feel powerless. It's about making that little change in my corner of the world and how that can be positive.”
Having raised just $31,557 of their $50,000 target in the past five months, The Overdose Prevention Society is continuing to accept donations on their GoFundMe page.
• Sophia Danai performs with Jeremy Allingham and Skyote on March 24 at the Biltmore Cabaret (2755 Prince Edward St.) 19+. Doors at 7pm, show at 8. Tickets $15 at ticketfly.com.
