Garth Mullins knows the pain of losing people all too well.
In 2019, during my early days of becoming a harm reduction advocate, I visited Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and heard about a celebration of life for Chereece Keewatin, a comrade lost to the drug war. Keewatin was president of the British Columbia Association of People on Opioid Maintenance and a member of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, as well as an editorial board member of Mullins’ podcast Crackdown, which had just launched. Mullins and Keewatin were close friends.
I thought I had lost a lot of friends, but I could tell that day that the community I saw grieving had experienced much more than their share of these losses. That was the first time I saw Mullins—tall, bright white hair, a little awkward, with an extremely rad sense of style. And a unique kind of energy and confidence, where you could tell he had a passion for drug-user activism that had been burning for a long time.
Since then, Crackdown has become widely known among drug users, health care workers, and policymakers. It’s been added to the syllabus of many university courses, and taken Mullins to places like Portugal, Scotland and Switzerland. Through the podcast he shares stories of local drug users and talks with them about different issues facing their communities. I feel like Crackdown’s editorial board are the leaders of Canada’s drug policy family.
Over the past six years I’ve gotten to build a bit of a relationship with Mullins. I even made my own appearance on the podcast as part of a narrative review on grief and trauma that was recorded in Geneva, Switzerland. It’s one of my proudest moments as a drug-user advocate.
Once when Mullins came to Halifax we came to the place I was staying, and we poured stiff drinks and talked about a work collaboration that had gone wrong—a webinar that I ended up missing because I had recently overdosed and was out of commission. Mullins assured me that wasn’t my fault; it’s because we have a toxic drug supply.
Mullins grew up in Yellowknife, capital of the Northwest Territories. In his early teens he moved to Vancouver, where he started to use drugs. In his new memoir, the national bestseller Crackdown: Surviving and Resisting the War on Drugs, he shares stories from his life—from being arrested for possession in San Francisco, to going to graduate school in London, to getting on methadone maintenance—and sets out his vision to end the drug war. Our interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
My book is out now. Available anywhere. The audiobook too (which I read). It’s part memoir, part manifesto and aims right at the heart of the current Trump / Poilievre right wing backlash against harm reduction. https://t.co/hObgzkoGfo
— Garth Mullins (@garthmullins) April 16, 2025
Matthew Bonn: I absolutely loved the book and have been a huge fan of the podcast. How do you feel about sharing your story in such an open format? Were you nervous, scared, excited?
Garth Mullins: Originally the book was going to be a series of essays with a few personal anecdotes mixed in. I shared an early draft of a chapter with my buddy Jeff Louden. Jeff read carefully, then looked up from all the citations and footnotes and said, “This is really interesting stuff, but reads a bit like an encyclopedia … keep it real. It should sound like you.” So I started again, this time with my own story. I get to make all the political and historical points. I get to mention the studies and the research, but within the context of my own life. Personal stories can be more compelling, more accessible. That’s what I thought the moment called for. So that’s what I ended up doing. It was pretty hard, because I had to be sensitive about the stories of ex-partners and family members. Theirs are not mine to tell.
MB: I love the chapter when you and Jeff met in Ottawa after you performed at your first punk show. I got to meet Jeff a bit when I was in Vancouver doing my study on drug smoking. Such a cool guy. How has Jeff influenced your activism?
GM: Jeff is my best friend. He’s really my brother. We’ve had each other’s backs for more than three decades. My life is better for having met him for sure. I had already found heroin before we met, so it’s not like my life would have been radically different. Jeff is a loner, so I had to coax him into activism. He still tells me that we go to too many meetings where there’s too much talk and not enough action. He’s probably right. But he still shows up.
“Methadone saved my life … I no longer had to spend all my time and money outrunning dopesickness. I could get on with doing the other things I wanted.”
MB: The chapters where you are talking about getting on methadone hit home. What role has methadone played in your success?
GM: Methadone saved my life. People dismissed methadone as just trading one drug for another—after all, methadone is an opioid just like heroin or fentanyl. But that concept was really revolutionary to me. The problems I was having—overdosing, getting locked up, being broke—were not because of the opioid molecules in my bloodstream, but about the way society organized itself in response. Methadone meant I no longer had to spend all my time and money outrunning dopesickness. I could get on with doing the other things I wanted.
MB: I know all the Crackdown listeners who are on methadone will be able to relate to the chapter titled “The Switch.” Can you briefly explain what that refers to, and why it’s important?
GM: In 2014, methadone patients in British Columbia were forced to begin using a different formulation, which did not work for most of us. This was just when fentanyl started hitting the street here. Lots of people on the new methadone found it didn’t really last very long, so they were scoring off the street to top up. Overdoses started ramping up. We fought back for years, trying to get the government to reverse its decision. Eventually we won, and were allowed to access the old methadone again. The lesson is that we all rely on this medication and we are very vulnerable to decisions made by officials who have no idea what the impacts might be. So we all gotta stick together and organize, otherwise we are vulnerable to shit like this.
MB: I want to ask a little bit about your time going to jail. Being young and in the United States, you must have been a bit frightened. Would you do anything differently now? And are you allowed to travel to the US?
GM: I was scared shitless. If I had to do it all over, I would’ve stayed in bed that day. I definitely would’ve tossed the drugs while the cops were searching for me. Travel to the US is difficult for me, as it has become for so many people now. Over the years, they’ve hooked up all the databases and it has become increasingly difficult to cross the border, to the point where I no longer try.
“When I started getting active in social movements and in punk, I got exposed to all kinds of ideas and people—many of whom were involved in academia. It was a breath of fresh air.”
MB: I enjoyed the chapter of you going to London for your master’s program. Did your university education play a role in shaping your activism?
GM: It was the reverse really. When I was in high school, I never thought I’d go to university. I got bad grades and I thought of myself as a dumb kid. The intellectual environment of the 1980s was claustrophobic, like a long pep rally for capitalism. Margaret Thatcher said, “There is no alternative” to anyone who dreamed of one. But when I started getting active in social movements and in punk, I got exposed to all kinds of ideas and people—many of whom were involved in academia. It was a breath of fresh air and lit a fire in me to know more, to go find out for myself. I had no idea there were entire disciplines that looked at the society and history critically, and from the point of view of people who’ve been fucked over most of the time. I was jonesing for that kind of thought.
MB: I really appreciate you sharing your experiences with PTSD and using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) as an intervention. Can you explain what EMDR is and how it helped you?
GM: I don’t really know how it works. When I went to the doc, she explained it, but it sounded like hippy bullshit to me. But I tried to keep an open mind and it worked. The doc asked me to think of an image associated with a distressing memory. She gave me a little electronic unit to hold in each hand that produced a rhythmic left-right buzzing. She had me focus on the image. Over a few sessions, the emotional intensity associated with the memory diminished. She said the memory was “reintegrated.” I can now think about it without feeling that hot stab of shame or pain. Supposedly the process mimics the natural memory processing that occurs during REM sleep, helping the brain reframe traumatic memories.
MB: I really enjoyed the chapter called “The Transmission” where you shared a little about the birth of Crackdown. What impact has hosting the show made on your life?
GM: Hosting Crackdown has allowed me to meet some great people and travel to some interesting places. While the podcast is not about me, I do share little anecdotes here and there. I started telling my own story. After so many years of keeping my own history with opioids secret, it was very liberating. All the positive feedback helped me stop feeling ashamed of who I am. I have always felt that my truths were suspect. Nobody believes drug users. You can just feel suspicion building up in a room. But with the podcast, we back up all our experiences with research and for the most part, I think we are believed. That has been very gratifying.
Image (cropped) via Garth Mullins/Penguin Random House Canada
Show Comments