A New Trip! Peer’s Half Year Recap

Hi! This is Leandra, one of the new Trip! Peers. Since it’s my first blog post (and the first post overall in a while), I figure I’d introduce myself and list some highlights of my first six months with Trip! Project!

A bit about me: I’m tall, fat, and brown, and I’m a butch trans lesbian. I’ve been community organizing for Filipino youth for the last six years, and I go to lots of DIY shows in the city – you might hear me from afar with my belly laugh or see me throwing my weight around in the pit (if I’m not on shift, that is).

My first Trip! event was Holiday Board Games and Tea, two days before Christmas last year. I waded through soft snow to Bampot – my glasses fogged up from the warmth as soon as I stepped inside. Warm and cozy was the vibe that night – I met Peers and volunteers, drank many cups of tea, got more into a game of Sequence than I expected, and picked up care packages Trip! had put together for everyone who attended. I remember feeling that it was exactly the kind of evening I needed.

Photo of a small table with harm reduction supplies, including: HRT injection kit, safer piercing kits, bowl pipe kits, naloxone, earplugs and a book of harm reduction literature cards for browsing.

At the end of January, I went to a New Friends DIY show with a stacked lineup: And Always, Cease, Botfly, and Life in Vacuum. Trip! happened to be tabling that night, which was a pleasant surprise. The Trip! table was a needed reprieve when the mosh pit got a bit too overwhelming. That night, I learned that volunteer training was starting up in the spring and I knew I wouldn’t miss it.

Volunteer training took place from March to May – and at the end of it I got hired as a Peer! I learned so much from volunteer training: CPR, precautions for overdose prevention, Hep C transmission (pictured: CW blood, needle injury), specific drug interactions, Trip!’s harm reduction principles, and more. The boundaries training in particular helped me advocate for myself in my friendships. At the Anti-Racism & Anti-Oppression Training, I felt safe to speak on transmisogyny in a room where my lived experiences would be listened to and honoured, which often hasn’t been the case. One moment of instructive irony: on a ‘wheel of intersections’ worksheet which illustrated positions of varying privilege, the ableism part of the wheel was hard to read.

Pictured: several flash cards on table grouped into risk categories for catching Hep C. Flash cards say potentially risk behaviour such as touching, sharing toothbrush, chestfeeding, needlestick injury

Finally, I started to go on outreaches in June. I have experience doing outreaches in community organizing, so I haven’t felt completely out of place. My first outreach was at the Trans 4 Toronto benefit show at Houndstooth on June 16th. I was very supported by the volunteers that went with me – it helped that I was among community and friends too.

Wherever I’ve been in a harm reduction space in the city, I mention I’m a new Trip! Peer and people’s eyes light up. In these interactions, I really feel the collective impact of Trip!’s work over the last 30 years. I’ve met former volunteers from the early 2010s, learned that some of my friends used to go to Trip! drop-ins, and found Trip! literature in DIY house shows. It’s been rewarding, fulfilling, and special to be a part of it, and I’m really excited to be a part of this new era of Trip! Project! See you around! <3

– Leandra, Trip! Peer

Overdose and Grief

It goes without saying that the past few years have been hard on us all. COVID-19 has had a huge impact on society, and a lot of things have changed. On top of the pandemic, we’re facing an epidemic with the opioid crisis. In Canada, there has been a significant increase in opioid-related deaths since 2016. The overdose crisis continues to affect people who use drugs, their friends and families, and communities across Canada. Between January 2016 and September 2022, there were more than 34,400 apparent opioid toxicity deaths, many of which also involved stimulants or other substances. The crisis is continuously growing, and is largely affecting the youth population with young Canadians aged 15 to 24 being the fastest-growing population requiring hospital care from opioid overdoses.

Image by photoangel on Freepik

At the rate with which we are losing people to overdose, and stigma around drug use in society, deaths by overdose are often overlooked. The lives of the people who die from overdose are often cast aside, and sometimes judged. Having conversations about drug use, overdoses, and what may follow when someone overdoses helps us not only destigmatize these topics but also helps provide support. While we don’t want to normalize preventable deaths from overdose, until there is safe supply these deaths will continue and we need to be able to discuss it openly. Overdose and grief are topics that may be hard to talk about, but it’s important that we share our experiences and communicate these things to not feel alone and move through our grief in a healthy way. Continue reading

Need in the Time of COVID

Sometimes the pressures of existing can begin to weigh heavily on us and we start to consider that we may need to ask for a little help from our loved ones. Maybe it’s because we have a lot on our plate just by nature of who we are and the world we live in. Other times we are those people that are seemingly so full of strength and energy to those who need a helping hand, so much so that they don’t hesitate to ask when they need support. Frequently though, it feels like I am perpetually and simultaneously in both states of existence; always overwhelmed by the needs of others and constantly considering asking for help in managing my own needs because of it. I’ve come to realise that I have a complicated relationship with needing, being needed, and asking for help. I wonder often whether I use helping others to distract myself from helping myself. Then I feel bad about asking for support because I might not have had to, were I putting my own oxygen mask on first. Maybe this is ok, though. Realistically, we all go through times when we have the energy to spare for the needs of others and times when we need help coping ourselves.

We’re now well into year three of a pandemic that has vastly changed our lives in many obvious but also many subtle ways. The ways in which we all interact with each other have been strained and altered. Physical touch in a greeting has become a bit of an awkward dance of managing people’s comfort levels. At least, dramatically more so than it was before all this. Being isolated at home has become the default for many, making connecting in the real world all the more challenging and exhausting. Social landscapes have changed: two years away from consistent partying has meant that many of your friends have taken the opportunity to leave that part of their lives behind. Maybe many others spent the past two years getting “too” wrapped up in their substance use (something we each get to define for ourselves, of course) during a time when it felt like the “rules” had changed or were no longer applicable. Perhaps you are one of these two kinds of people, or perhaps somehow you are both. Either way, the nature of being there for each other has changed as well. Continue reading

Mutual-Aid Harm Reduction: Black History & Future is Love

For this February: May we not only celebrate and honour Black histories, but may we invest in Black futures also. For this Valentine’s day, may we give back, may we gift each other the flowers that we deserve, and may we love deeper in solidarity. For all of this month and beyond, let us continue to seed for change through care, as mutual-aid is indeed harm reduction in a world where it feels like there’s not enough love to live. Black folks in our communities deserve rest, justice, and recovery. We will not celebrate resilience without resistance to systematic violence. We shall remember to care for, invest in, and heartfully cherish Black presence, in all timelines and beyond, as we love towards a future that we all deserve.

Check out these upcoming events (Feb 24 & Feb 28) at NIA Centre for the Arts, a Toronto org that supports & showcases Black artists and artwork.  

2 GoFundMes to Support & Share:
Justice for Moses Erhirhie

Help Shar Get Therapy & Heal

Care for Our Queer & Trans Black Friend

Black Trans Couple’s Affirmation & Survival Fund

Myles’ Gender Affirming Procedure Fund

Therapy Fund: Black, trans, ND & traumatized

Help Antea Rest and Recover

Cleo’s Top Surgery

Help My Mom and Her Fight against Cancer

Regis4Ever

Justice for Moka

In Memory of D’Andre A. Campbell

Written and compiled by Leon Tsai, a Trip! Peer