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How many drug users who OD’d have brain damage? Doctors say Canada needs data
VANCOUVER — Dayton Wilson’s drug-taking routine ended when he overdosed on heroin laced with fentanyl, but being able to walk and talk normally are also part of his past as he struggles with brain damage from a drug linked to thousands of deaths.
Wilson, 24, used illicit drugs for the last time in August 2016 on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, according to his mother, but he doesn’t remember anything about the day he was taken to hospital.
It was the first of two facilities where he would spend three months learning to take a few steps and utter some words.
The latest figures available from the Public Health Agency of Canada say over 9,000 people fatally overdosed across the country between January 2016 and June 2018. British Columbia’s coroners service recorded nearly a third of those deaths.