Carlyn is a freelance journalist based in Toronto. She writes about pain, struggle, injustice, drugs, exile, suffering—and how to make it better. Her work has appeared in publications including the Washington Post, the Guardian and the Globe and Mail.
Her second book, On Opium, will be published in Canada in September. Her memoir, Opium Eater: The New Confessions, was a Globe and Mail Best 100 book of 2016.
When I walk into my local pharmacy to pick up a naloxone kit, I don’t need to present a prescription.…
Isolation, drug-supply disruptions and other effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have sent North America’s already-high overdose rates soaring. Here in…
"The homeless crisis interested me,” says Mary Duffy of the time before she herself became homeless in Texas. “I wouldn’t…
Just before we went into lockdown, I visited Sanctuary, a homelessness organization in Toronto, to interview people with experience of…
“Six months ago Jonny Brown admits he was in a dark place. Addicted to drugs, he'd lost his house and…
Unsanctioned grassroots initiatives—from the unofficial to the plain illegal—are both the origins and the soul of the harm reduction movement.…
Viewed from the United States, Canada’s comparatively liberal social mores and universal healthcare would seem to set the stage for…