Speaking August 31 at an event in Parksville marking International Overdose Awareness Day, Greg Hemminger shared his story of opioid addiction and recovery.
In the mid 2000s, Hemminger was working as a filmmaker. He says his first feature premiered at the New York International Film Festival when he was 22 years old.
“Directing my second feature film, I got into a serious car accident. I broke my ribs, I broke my collar bone. I fractured my shoulder. I broke my back, and I had a serious, concussion brain bleed,” he said.
Hemminger says his doctor prescribed him opioids following the accident. He says he didn’t think much of it, until a year and a half later, a friend told him he was taking synthetic heroin.
“ I’ll never forget that moment because my stomach dropped. My heart started beating really fast. And in that moment I realized a lot of things over the last year and a half started making sense. There was a reason why I was waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweats, feeling like I was coming outta my skin, feeling like I was doing, having convulsions, almost having seizures,” he said.
Hemminger says that when he was younger, he remembers his dad saying of heroin ‘if you ever get mixed up in that, you’re done, you may as well kill yourself.’
Hemminger says those words came back to haunt him.
“I could have gone for that support and said, Hey, I mistakenly have fallen into something that I didn’t bargain for, but pride, but my dad’s words about if you ever get mixed up in that, you may as well kill yourself rained down upon me, and then arrogance also washed upon me thinking, ‘yeah, I’m not like them, I’ll be okay. I can deal with this.'” he said.
“I really wish I would’ve cut it off at that point because a decade later I was 125 pounds. I was living on the streets…I had died three times clinically, and my life was in ruins and all it would’ve taken Is reaching out, but the stigma is so real.”
Hemminger now works with an initiative called the Tailgate Toolkit, which aims to address mental health and substance use issues within the trades.
“ We are fooled into believing that this crisis only exists on Maine and Hastings, or Pandora in Victoria, and that simply isn’t the case,” he said. “ The fact of the matter is around half the people we are losing are gainfully employed.”
He said he’s seven and a half years removed from his addiction. He spoke about the connection he found within treatment centres, how he benefited from Opioid Agonist Therapy, in his case methadone, which he credits with saving his life, and his relationship with his addictions doctor.
He also says harm reduction was the catalyst to get him to positive things in his life that he said made him “feel like a human being again.”
Also speaking at the event was Cory Ranger, President of the Harm Reduction Nurses’ Association.
It was held in Parksville Community Park and organized by the Oceanside Community Action Team and Moms Stop The Harm. A vigil to remember loved ones lost to the toxic drug poisoning crisis followed the event.
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