Darryl’s Story

Darryl – Produced by Health Canada: Canada.ca/Opioids

Darryl: 

The question is, how does a doctor and somebody who’s so well educated get addicted to fentanyl? This is how it happens. 

I’m already addicted to Percocet, I’m going through withdrawal, and I wanna just simply feel better.  

Narrator:  

In Plain Sight is a Health Canada audio series that explores the personal stories of people affected by the opioid crisis. 

Every day, approximately 11 people die from opioid overdoses in Canada. 

We see this on the news. We know that it’s happening. We know that it’s real. Yet, we tell ourselves that it couldn’t happen to the people we know, the people we work with, the people we love. That it couldn’t happen to us. 

The reality is, the opioid crisis is happening right before our eyes, in plain sight, and it can affect anyone. There are thousands of stories waiting to be heard. 

This is where Darryl’s story begins…  

Darryl: 

My name is Darryl Gebien, from Toronto. Born here, raised. Did, uh, 17 years of education and I eventually landed a job back in my home province, Ontario, in the emergency room. And that’s when things were going well. Getting my new career started. It had a very trying residency, but it was excellent and was very good training. 

Then came a day when I woke up. I’ve always had back pain, but this was substantially worse. I had had it since I was 18, off and on. I always knew something was wrong with my back but to this point it was completely. Except one day, things changed. 

So my mother had saw what I was going through with the pain, and she gave me one of her one her Dilaudids. She had back pain. And this is definitely a hereditary component. So that was my first introduction to an opioid, and, uh, I liked it immediately. I mean, it helped the pain, but I also liked the mood it gave me. Everything kinda felt good. So, immediately I was drawn to it because this one pill took away the pain, and psychologically, as well, I felt good. And, my mum recognized right away that something was up, cause I think I had asked for another one-two hours later and I remember her laughing, kind of. A nervous laughter. “Oh, I can see what’s going on here. No, no, no. You’re not gonna get any more of those.” 

That was the beginning for me. If Advil wouldn’t cut it, then an opioid would. The pain got a little bit better. It would come and go. I’d go many months without any problems. But then, progressively, that got worse. And, I started relying more and more on Percocet. 

So, I had prescriptions at this point from my family doctor. And I was taking Percocet periodically. The first prescription lasted a very long time. I remember that I had that pill bottle in my medicine cabinet for about a year. But, I found that the worrisome thing is that there was nothing really serious going on in my life. Life was going well. 

But I do remember, at one point, that part of me that I guess is somewhat risk-taking and trying new activities or pop a pill when his friends are over playing PlayStation Golf, um, because we’re having a few beers. And I’m like, “uh, I wouldn’t mind trying to see how the Percocet feels, like, when I’m having a couple of beers”. 

That was a decision that was just a horrible one in the end, because I opened a Pandora’s Box. But, that’s in my nature. Why’d I do that? But I did. And I didn’t realize the consequences would lead to a horrible spiral that almost led to my death from a fentanyl addiction, years later. 

So, that was the beginning of my downfall. It wasn’t like I was doing it every weekend. But just here and there, I would be going out with friends and I’d pop a pill. So I wasn’t taking it so much for back pain anymore. It was there. I would use it for the back pain but sometimes I’d take it just, socially. 

Does this mean I’m a bad person? Does this mean I have no morals? This is how it starts for a lot of people. I’m not alone. And I do carry a lot of shame, and, uh, embarrassment over that. But then, it’s something I’ve learned to recognize and control now. You know, I’ve learned the hard way to be careful with my decision-making. But going back, anyway, to that time, it was a slow and steady spiral that started and, it just progressively became a little more frequent and a little more than one pill, a little more often that I’d be drinking. 

Just to add fuel to this fire, things had changed in my life as well. I met a girl. She ended up moving from New Brunswick to Toronto, and this happened kinda quickly. She had a daughter. And my life changed very rapidly. Because things started not going so well. And then we had another child – we had my first child… her second child. And so, bought the house. And, um, and it changed now, from single life – living in a condo – to buying a home, working late, a job in the emergency department and the marriage was precipitous, the pregnancy was precipitous. This acceleration, I think, also undermined what was going on in my life, cause the marriage wasn’t going well, there was also lack of communication between my wife and myself, which is. — we’re both to blame. 

Also, there was a lot of discord between her and my mother. And it was a very, very difficult situation. And I eventually cut off my parents. Um… my wife and my mother got into some major, major email arguments, and I had to make a decision at one point, of what… what I was gonna do here. So I chose my wife. And that also led to more problems, cause now I’m cut off from my support network. 

We’re a very tight family. And, so the relationship’s getting worse, my back pain is getting worse, and isolation from my friends and family is starting. I’m internalizing my feelings. I’m not expressing myself to my wife or anybody else. And maybe it comes from my profession, but you know, as a tradition, you don’t share information about yourself, to remain professional. And I took it out on myself with the drugs. I felt that they helped take it away, the… it helps treat my anxiety. And the back paid. 

So the back pain’s getting worse. It’s progressively affecting me, not just pain-wise, but neurologically if affected my leg, I had weakness in my leg. It affected my bladder. I had problems with urination. And then, my wife and I decided to move from Toronto, because she’s unhappy in Toronto. I’m mobile with my job. I want to put some distance between my family and I, to be honest. Another bad decision. But we moved up to Barrie. And this was the icing on the cake here, because then within two years, my addiction just completely, uh, spiraled out of control. 

Narrator: 

Cut off from his family, separated from his friends, Darryl found himself both physically and emotionally isolated from what supports had previously buoyed him from completely going under. 

Increasingly he found no pleasure in the activities he once loved – except one – which grew to fill the emptiness inside of him – exacerbated by what he felt was a toxic work environment. 

Darryl: 

It just extinguished any sort of life within me. Everything going wrong here. 

The work. Be stressed and come home from work and be stressed at home with a constantly revolving argument with my wife. And now looking back, I mean, it’s obvious there were some serious issues. I’d forgotten about this until later on, but I remember I would come home from the night shift, or any shift, and I would sleep in the driveway, in my car. And that is an obvious sign that something is definitely very wrong. I just… I didn’t want to go into the house, and face an argument and stresses of my relationship with my wife. 

One thing I just need to describe here, just rewind a little bit, is the Percocet addiction grew and grew and grew. And, I just need to let you know that, how insidious the addiction is. Anybody who’s been prescribed Percocet, if they’re using regularly over a week, and they suddenly stop it, they will feel the effects of withdrawal. It is so strong and potent and it’s insidious on how the addiction grows on you. 

So that person stops. The next day they’re going through withdrawal and they don’t even know it. Because they’ve never felt it before. But they fell very irritable. Discontented. Anxious. Nervous. Sweaty. Chills. Aches. Pains. And they don’t know what… You know, I was going through that one day. I didn’t know… I had no idea what it was. 

It wasn’t after a week for me. This… we’re talking after several months. So a couple of years now actually. It was a day, I wanted to stop. And, the next day, within 24 hours, I was in a horrible shape with this withdrawal. And I didn’t know what it was at first. I didn’t recognize it. I just… people compare it to a flu, but it, it’s so much worse than a flu. Because flus don’t affect your psychology. Um, maybe you feel down. But, I mean, going through withdrawal… physical stuff’s like the flu. But what’s much worse, is the psychological. What’s going on in your head. You feel like you’re going to die. You feel like the world is going to collapse around you. And THAT, is incredibly powerful. Because, no one wants to feel sick. And how do you avoid from feeling sick? You take more. And, I don’t think I realized at the time, but I took another Percocet later on – and, low and behold, aha – I feel, felt back to normal. 

So that was a pivotal moment in my addiction, because now I’m totally hooked on it. Dependant. I’ll feel sick, and psychologically, in very rough shape, if I don’t take it. And so now, I’m a slave to the drug. And that was a big step – realizing that I’m going through withdrawal. 

Within six months, my use of Percocet – I’ve already given you the background – just completely escalated, and took off. And there was a day when I had no more Percocet, but I had a fentanyl patch at home. It had been there for a year. I did wear them occasionally, because, when I had exacerbations of the back pain. But this day was different. When I was going through opioid withdrawal, and I became desperate, and I wanted to simply feel better. And, this is a very common thing for addiction in general, is people go to extreme lengths to feel better. And, they will rob. They will steal from their family. They will burn bridges. They will rob banks. They will steal from pharmacies. Sell their bodies. And doctors will abuse their right to prescribe opioids. I totally took advantage of my ability to write prescriptions. 

I’m going through the Percocet withdrawal, and… I had the fentanyl patch, and this is where that recklessness in me, with that whatever it is in my personality, but I Googled on how to smoke it. I’d heard people were smoking fentanyl patches. I didn’t want to wear it, because it wasn’t strong enough. I was already deeply addicted. My tolerance to the opioids had grown. So wearing the patch didn’t have that effect of medicating my pain and my soreness. So I Googled how to smoke it, and, um, I was alone in the house. And I cut it up into little squares, and, I had a puff. And, it was incredibly strong. And I would have died, right there and then. I would have overdosed, had I not had the tolerance I had built up with the Percocet. 

It was an incredibly strong high. Powerful high. And I loved it. Immediately. And so it was like the first time I had the Perc… or the Dilaudid, many years previously. It’s a very similar thing. I’d just been introduced to something new, and it just hard-wired my brain at that point. I like this, I want more. 

The downside of this is now this drug is potent. This drug is, you know, a hundred times more powerful than Percocet, if not more. And not only is it more potent but you go into withdrawal even faster because it’s such a rapid-acting drug, fentanyl. So it gets you higher. And it gets you higher faster, but you also come down faster. So within 15 minutes, I was already craving it and taking more. It was that fast. The addiction just spiraled, accelerated now. That spiral just sped up a thousandfold. And so now, the next day, I couldn’t stop. It was six months of hell. It only took me six months to spiral to the point where I almost died. 

Something had to give. Either I was going to die because – not from an overdose – but just from, just from extreme use. I’d lost so much weight. And I’m hiding it. And trying to keep it all together. And I’m still able to work. I was not getting high at work. I would get around that. I would get around going through withdrawal, by wearing a fentanyl patch. And, I was dying. And, my mother knew it. My friends knew it. And I wouldn’t get help for myself. 

And then a couple of times, I tried to quit. I’d come home to my parents’ place. And live – I’d stay on the couch for five days and just was in horrible, horrible shape. And try to wean myself off. And I thought, you know, a week would be enough. I’d get time off work and try to wean myself off within a week. And that was not even close. In the end, it took me six months to get off the stuff. Six months, not a week. 

So, eventually I gave myself up. The pharmacy figured it out. The police got involved. I got arrested. My work was notified. Taken off the schedule. And I went to rehab for five, six weeks. And, um, went through absolute hell, uh, when I was there. I was incredibly sick. 

They don’t do this anymore, but I was put on Suboxone, and put on a rapid wean. Most people don’t tolerate it well. They start using again. But I guess for doctors who have, like me, who are very stubborn, I need to learn things the hard way. And I’m glad that they did it, buy, my gosh, I went through withdrawal, not once, but three times while I was there. And it was the biggest nightmare, worst nightmare of my life, by far. 

And I was incredibly, uh, weak at that point, but it took about 36 hours of the worst of the symptoms to get over, and then it was another six months to get through the physical stuff. And then it took another two years to get over the psychological effects. Couldn’t make up my mind on things. Very difficulty with concentration. Obviously I wasn’t working but it just took me a very, very long time to get through it all. 

I did have a couple of relapses. The police were investigating me. The last relapse, was soon after rehab when I should not have been discharged. To be honest, I wasn’t ready, I was still very sick. But, I had a court date and I was released and I wanted to leave rehab. So I relapsed. 

That’s when I, uh, what I’d call it a dry shower incident. So I relapsed on the fentanyl – smoking it in a shower stall in the basement. I smoked down there, because the smell wouldn’t trickle into the house. But I didn’t realize that I had overdone it and my wife saved my life. She came downstairs because I disappeared. And to this day, I still think it was nighttime, but she tells me it was morning. And she came down to find me green-faced, barely breathing. And that’s one shade away from blue. Which is cyanosis – which means “sayonara.” So she found me, just teetering on death’s doorstep. And I remember the look in her face when she, yelled my name and I guess I opened my eyes and the look of fear in her eyes, I will never forget. 

I put her through hell. 

Narrator: 

Darryl’s life was saved that day… But what next? Would this moment lead him down the road to recovery? 

Darryl: 

I will never forget the look on her face, but I can see… what I’d done to her and what I’d done to myself. And uh, you’d think that a person would be done then. Guess what? No. I kept going. I kept using. 

She took away the paraphernalia that was strewn around me in the shower stall. And I went right back to using again. And I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything at that point. 

The bottom that finally got me was being arrested. Two weeks later, the police were investigating me and that last prescription for fentanyl triggered a response by the police saying “we gotta arrest this guy now. He’s a danger to himself and the public.” So they arrested me. 

Police came, seven o’clock in the morning, and raided my house. I was handcuffed and taken away. That day I was arrested. Put in the Penetanguishene jail, stayed there for about 18 days. And here I am, in an orange, prison jumpsuit, and three months previously, I was working as a successful physician in an emergency department. So that was very much a rude awakening. By this point, believe it or not, that was the beginning of my healing. Being arrested and taken away from my wife and children, that was finally the bottom. The rock bottom, at that point. 

So, I got better after that. I healed, when I was in jail for those 18 days. It was very sobering, scary experience, but I did okay in the end. Parents were there all the time visiting. When I finally made bail, I had to split from my wife. And so, she lived in the house with the kids. And I moved down to my parents’ place in Toronto. And, after that, went to a couple more rehabs, and finally got it right. 

In total, I did six months of rehab, and finally got better. Clear-headed and healed. 

With relapse, generally there’s a sequence of events that goes on of decisions. And I realized, if I do good, I feel good about what’s going on in my life and good things tend to happen. If I do bad, if I relapse nothing but sheer negativity is going to happen. And it took a couple of relapses to realize that. 

If I just think about my decision-making before I become impulsive. And that’s another feature of my personality, is impulsivity. To recognize it, and control it. And I carry that with me to this day. I’ve made a series of good decisions now. And I’ve built up a massive amount of recovery – of good, healthy recovery – because I’m taking better care of myself. 

I’ve learned to voice. To not internalize. To externalize. Share my issues with people. I’ve went to hundreds and hundreds of 12-step meetings. I went to after-care groups. I went to an addictionist and a caduceus group, which is people in recovery who are health care professionals. So that’s called “Caduceus.” And built up a strong support network. 

And, I had to live the next two years though, uncertainty about my future. I mean, the Crown attorney was talking to me about a 12-year sentence. Twelve years. Living like this, every day, not knowing. And then having the back pain, of course. It’s still there. It’s still going on. Major stressors. But I learned to talk about it. I learned all these things about how – I became a master of coping with my stress without medicating myself. That’s – that was the difference of what happened as the new Darryl versus the old Darryl. 

And that, surprisingly helped in many, many ways. I learned that the same things that helped in recovery, are the same things that lead to happiness. That’s a big one right there, as well. Things like being connected with other people. That’s huge. Being honest. Not being… not internalizing – like I say I keep using that word, but being able to express what’s going on. And so, something came to life in me, and my mother called it. She was… she was impatient, wondering when it’s gonna happen but it did happen. And then it grew, and grew and grew. And I remember, speaking to a guy in recovery and saying, “I’m finally back to the guy I was five years ago.” And he goes, “no, no Darryl… you’re better than who you were five years ago.” Wow. That’s true. And I’ve grown stronger and stronger since. It just took one hell of a lesson to get there. 

So, I’m living my life like this two years, not knowing what my future’s gonna bring. Eventually, I did plead guilty. Just for the record, it was trafficking fentanyl. But not trafficking just to make money kind of trafficking. Not dealing. Lot of people – and I thought this once too – that trafficking equates to dealing. No. Trafficking equates sometimes to dealing but the movement of drugs, giving of drugs, if you share a joint with somebody at a party, that’s trafficking. By me writing prescriptions for fentanyl, and, uh, having somebody involved when they gave it back to me, forcing a pharmacist to give a bogus prescription to me, that’s trafficking. 

So, I pleaded guilty, and I was sentenced to two years, plus a day. So that put me into the federal system. I was scared silly, of course, to be – to sit there and have my future in the hands of a judge. But fortunately, I got a very favourable sentence and it did come with a sense of total relief. At least now I know what’s going on in my future. Cause living like that with two years of uncertainty, is definitely a horrible way to live. 

So, I was cuffed and taken away. Not a good time. To see what I did to my family and friends and being in the courtroom and to see the tears and, but I was okay. So I went into the federal system and I served eight months and good behaviour. I was at Joyceville, Joyceville Medium. Which is an assessment, now called assessment unit, for two months and then for six months I was minimum security at Joyceveille as well. And, I did okay. 

It was a little difficulty when I first got out in December of 2017, just to readjust to normal life. To this day, loud noises and any sort of violence really bothers me. So it’s kind of – it’s a couple of scars left over I guess. But um, that’s the weird thing, I didn’t really witness much violence when I was in jail, prison, but I cannot watch a single thing on televisions – anything that has to do with violence. 

But I did okay in the end. I did a lot of writing when I was in there. I became a math tutor. I was a librarian assistant. I became physically active. And got healthier again. So, here I am, six months later and I’ve never been stronger in my life. 

What I want to do now, what I am doing, is speaking out about the opioid crisis. Speaking out about opioid addiction, substance abuse in general. And I’m willing to talk about my story in any sort of public forum, public speaking, education seminars, students, police. 

It’s important to me to tell – get out there and public speaking, any forum whatsoever, to explain this stuff to people. Like, why is it people will break into pharmacies and prostitute? Well I want to give the answers to try to humanize it, explain why people are doing this. And, I now see the patterns, which I never would have seen before when I was a physician and passing judgment on addicts. Giving them second-class treatment, which is endemic as well across emergency rooms in North America. 

That needs to change as well. There’s no room for judgment in the workplace, especially in healthcare. No room for judgment. We need to start looking at people, uh, people who are identifying as substance users, whether they’re on chronic opioids or full-fledged addiction, we need to look at them as somebody who – look past the manipulation, to realize, why are they trying to manipulate – because this is a sick person. And I want to let the doctors and nurses understand and try to treat people with compassion, and to be humane as opposed to judgmental. 

Narrator: 

Problematic opioid use is devastating Canadian lives. The numbers are tragic and staggering. These are the stories behind the numbers. This crisis has a face. It is the face of a friend; a co-worker; a family member. Meeting those eyes, and seeing our own reflection is the first step toward ending the stigma that often prevents people who use drugs from receiving help. To learn more about the opioid crisis, visit Canada.ca/Opioids. 

This audio series is a production of Health Canada. The opinions expressed by individuals on this program are those of the individuals and not those of Health Canada. Health Canada has not validated the accuracy of any statements made by the individuals on this program. Reproduction of this material, in whole or in part, for non-commercial purposes is permitted under the standard Terms of Use for Government of Canada digital content.