As an Ottawa-area family laid their 14-year-old daughter to rest Sunday following an apparent overdose, a local father is speaking up about his own teenage daughter’s struggle with drugs in the hope of saving lives.
“There’s many a days where my first concern upon awaking is making sure my beautiful baby girl is still alive,” Sean O’Leary said in an emotional interview with CTV Ottawa.
O’Leary’s 16-year-old daughter Paige has been struggling with drugs for nearly two years. The teen started using drugs at a party in Grade 10, and despite help along the way, has only recently gotten clean.
“It’s huge,” Paige told CTV Ottawa. “It’s crazy. I know so many people who are doing them now. Like, it’s starting to become a really, really big issue.”
One of the biggest issues is fentanyl. Drugs are secretly being laced with the powerful and addictive painkiller and taking users, especially youth, by surprise. Just this Christmas, O’Leary says he came home to find a teenage friend of Paige’s in his garage with no vital signs. Luckily, O’Leary arrived just in time to help save the overdosed boy’s life.
“People don’t know what’s inside some of these drugs,” Paige said. “You don’t know what you’re getting.”
In an emotional plea, O’Leary recently shared his family’s struggles in a in the hopes of getting parents in their community of Kanata, Ont., an Ottawa suburb, to band together to watch over their kids and talk frankly about drugs in order to save lives.
“If there’s 50 families watching out for 50 kids, it’s got to be better than what we’re doing now,” O’Leary said.
On an average day, about ten per cent of all calls to Ottawa paramedics are for overdoses. Many of the victims are in suburbs like Kanata.
Local city councillor Allan Hubley says that since Christmas, there have been at least three deadly overdoses among area teenagers, as well as several other close calls.
“Out here, there’s a lot of house parties,” Hubley told CTV Ottawa. “Someone can pass you something and say, ‘Here. You know, this will be fun. Try this.’ And next thing you know, you’re a statistic and your parents are grieving.”
The grieving Ottawa-area parents of had to lay their daughter to rest on Sunday after she died from an apparent overdose last Tuesday. They say her death was a mistake and that drugs were not part of her life.
Such an outcome is a fear that Sean O’Leary deals with daily. And the nearby tragedy, Paige adds, has served as a wake-up call.
“It’s made me realize that you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Paige said. “You can just go to sleep and never wake up. It’s not like overdosing on something else where it’s scary and you’re having a seizure or throwing up… You kind of just go to sleep.”
Paige is clean now and says she is on the right path. She also says that the risk of doing drugs isn’t worth it -- especially with the growing prevalence of fentanyl.
Her father says there are just not enough detox facilities around to deal with the growing crisis, especially when it comes to facilities geared towards teens. O’Leary also wants parents to talk openly with their kids about drug use, saying it’s easier to help your children and their friends when you know what they are using.
With files from CTV Ottawa’s Annie Bergeron-Oliver
