GETTING SYRINGES AT VICTORIA'S NEEDLE EXCHANGE

I walk past the the guy who's tripping out. He's stopped dancing and
kicking the wall repeatedly long enough to slur something at me
because I obviously don't belong there. But I ignore him and smile at
the kind looking black man in a cap. "Is this the needle exchange?"

He smiles back, "Yeah."

"Is this the lineup here?" motioning to the people leaned up against
the wall breathing frosty breath and cigarettes.

"Nope, just go on in."

The Victoria needle exchange on Blanshard Street is smaller than I
expected - the waiting room is not much larger than my bathroom. It's
less institutional and more cramped than I thought. I was expecting it
to be like the fluorescent, sparkly clean injection site in Vancouver.

There's a man slumped in one corner, swathed in blankets, eyes half
closed. Others slump in chairs.

A bedraggled young man behind the desk comes in from another room,
snapping off a rubber glove. "I'll be with you in just a minute." He
leaves. Another man with salt and pepper hair sits down.

"What can I do for you?"

"I need a needle," I say too quietly.

"What?"

"I need a needle."

"I can't hear you, speak to me."

"Um . I need a needle."

He pauses. I don't think this is what he was expecting from me. I'm
pretty sure I don't look like the type, but he hides it. "OK, what's
your code number?"

"I don't have one. I've never been here before."

"Never?"

"Nope."

He leans back in his chair. Perhaps he thinks I'm a kid trying for the
first time. But he's being neutral because he knows what his job is,
and he knows that I have the right to safety.

"You'd better take two syringes then. Wipe your arm with this alcohol
swab before you shoot."

I take the two syringes, alcohol swab and two blue plastic things that
he hands me. The blue plastic things contain 3.5 ml of sterile water
and say "Sterile water. Not for injecting. For inhalation." I'm still
not sure what that means.

"Use them, and then throw them out. No sharing."

"Yeah, rule number one, no sharing," the woman in a chair next to the
desk says to me. "No sharing waters either. Not even spoons."

I smile at her and thank her. Her face is round and kind and her eyes
are sincere. She knows a thing or two, I think.

The guy behind the counter tells me that if I come again, I'll have to
register and get a number. I think of telling him that I won't be
back, but I just quietly thank him and say goodbye, stuffing the
needles into my backpack, and walk out of there past the line of
people with my head spinning.

I sit on a bench a block away to look at the needles. They're smaller
than I expected. Evidently, it doesn't take much junk to do the trick.

Later, I wish I had brought a pack of cigarettes so I could smoke
outside with the users there and talk to them, hear what they had to
say. See through different eyes. Take advantage of the fact that for
those few moments at the needle exchange, I was one of them.

But I quit smoking almost three weeks ago. Cold turkey. And even that
was so hard that my roommates had to talk me down and feed me apples
while I was nicking out. I can't even imagine heroin addiction.

Imagine I really was a first time user. I had a place to go. They
didn't try to preach ideology, they gave me what I needed to be safe,
and they did it well. There was a sort of camaraderie there. There was
real compassion. I did not feel judged.

When people are pushed so far over the edge that they finally turn to
injection drugs, they are not likely to be thinking too much about
their health. The fact there is a place where they can find safe
equipment and instruction in this city is a godsend. Injection drugs
are usually the last place to turn for the most marginalized people in
our society.

If the needle exchange is shut down, we'll marginalize them further by
forcing them to turn to unsafe methods. Places that provide services
for the most stigmatized people in our society deserve more funding.
They deserve more than two overworked people and waiting rooms larger
than my bathroom. They deserve respect.