Examining Room: within the walls of the opioid crisis

During 30 years in primary care and addiction medicine, the Vancouver-based Dr. Lorinda Spooner has found her examining room a place of suffering, of adversity, but also of hope. Yet, since 2016, when the opioid crisis was declared a public health emergency in British Columbia, more than 17,000 people have died from the toxic street supply of illicit fentanyl. Hope has been harder to find.

So, Dr. Spooner began to write, "to try to find meaning out of all this suffering," and to give readers insight into the lives of those battling the disease of addiction. The result is this poetry collection - both raw and cathartic - one that looks unflinchingly at the pain the opioid epidemic has caused, and still marvels at the strength and resilience of those caught in its grasp.

Dr. Spooner writes, hauntingly, "I am not my sorrow. " That, surely, is a declaration for us all.