Neither Safe Nor Quiet: Trouble Came

2021

In the third year of the pandemic, attention to mental health and addiction is more important than ever. Drug overdose deaths have never been higher, the victims are people not merely a statistic. The extreme increase in stress and social isolation we are collectively living and consequent economic, social and political turmoil add to our sense of struggle, fear, anxiety and loss.

Neither safe nor quiet---Trouble Came--a series of textile theatrical backdrops to 5 laneway performances on aspects of mental illness and addiction—were funded by the Canada Council. These works were presented publicly in a socially distanced space in the laneway behind my Vancouver studio in 2021.

Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood---
Death could scarce be more bitter than that place!

Thus begins Dante’s Divine Comedy, The Inferno: an introduction to hell and an apt description of the landscape of mental illness and addiction. William Styron’s personal account of clinical depression, from his book Darkness Visible, accurately describes my own experience of clinical postpartum depression. “…the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. …every day once again began the rhythmic daily erosion of my mood—anxiety, agitation, unfocused dread.

While mental illness and addiction don’t discriminate in terms of victims, prejudicial treatment and racism are certainly factors. Statistics Canada reports that “Visible minority groups were more likely than Whites to report poor mental health.”

Prejudice and shame related to mental illness and addiction continue to form a powerful societal paradigm. Dialogue needs to move beyond opioid overdose statistics and police shootings during “well-being checks” into the terrain of knowledge and understanding of the complex, intermingled factors of abnormal chemistry, behavior, genetics and intergenerational trauma.

Physiological changes to the addict’s brain and the impact on family members can be profound.Equally profound is the erosion of self-confidence and self-esteem for those afflicted, and the addict’s cycles of anger, denial, use and despair followed by depression, anxiety, desperation and shame. As a society we can and must do better to understand the complexities of mental illness and addiction, to remove judgement and stigma and to provide more help. These conditions are illnesses, not choices.