On Thursday morning, Chris Schwede died alone in his tent outside Our Place of a suspected drug overdose. His death was something he and his sisters always knew could happen. But even so, it has left Candice Csaky and Tammy Trausch raw with grief and bitterness over society’s inability to help drug addicts. “It was like we all knew he had a terminal illness and it was time. But we didn’t know when it was coming and we didn’t know how to change that course for him,” Trausch said Friday. “But it still doesn’t make you ready when the time comes. It’s still a surprise and incredible.” She kept Schwede’s baseball glove and sunglasses and the blue jacket he had been wearing the last time she saw him. He had salvaged the familiar items from the blue tent, now a makeshift memorial, in front of the welfare office on Pandora Avenue. Members of the street community stopped by the scene to let the sisters know how many lives their brother had saved by administering naloxone to reverse a drug overdose. “He was like, ‘Kandi, I’m saving lives. I save lives. These people need help, and if I’m not here, I can’t help them,” Csaky recalled. “He saved a life the day before he died. But I wanted him to save himself first. The only life he couldn’t save was his own.” The 49-year-old’s death came after drug alerts from Island Health and Our Place Society about xylazine, a veterinary sedative adding to the already poisoned illegal drug supply. Our Place said it had responded to many difficult overdoses and that many were experiencing severe psychosis with the powerful new drug, known as Turquoise Down. Schwede’s sisters are not convinced their brother died of an overdose. They are awaiting toxicology results and the medical examiner’s report. Schwede grew up in Victoria, the second of four children. Family legend has it that he was the second to play the naked baby Superman in the original Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder. “That’s how he lived his life,” Csaky said. “He was invincible. He was strong.” Crack cocaine would prove to be his kryptonite. By all accounts, Schwede had a wonderful childhood. The family went camping and fishing together, watched Star Wars movies together, had Thanksgiving and Christmas together, Trausch said. Schwede earned his ticket and became a journeyman electrician. But as he grew older, he seemed to lose his way. “There have been a series of life events where things have become very difficult…” Csaky said. “…then it snowed,” Trauss added. Schwede, who started using cocaine at 18, became addicted to crack. He had many years of being healthy, but his addiction became more entrenched in the last six years. “He wanted help and we wanted to help. Everyone felt helpless,” Trausch said. “He needed someone to lead him on the right path, but nothing was available. There was no direction to point him to.” Schwede would have gone to treatment, said Csaky, who had helped him with his resume last year when he wanted to get off the streets and back to work. “He loved nothing more than family, especially his daughter.” The sisters had just spoken to a co-worker who told them they had been waiting 111 days for a rehab bed. Schwede, who lost many friends to the opioid crisis, was very careful with his drug supply, they said. “He hated opioids. He wouldn’t touch them, no matter what,” Csaky said. “He wouldn’t let people around our place smoke opioids in his tent or anywhere around them. He was telling them: “You have to stop. These things are dangerous. Will kill you “. “ Both women believe the messages about illegal drug use are misguided. They believe that instead of telling people how to use drugs safely, they should be telling them not to use. “The way the whole system is set up — the tents out there and the drug licensing doesn’t help anybody,” Trausch said, gesturing to the encampment. “It makes it easier for people to get on with this life. And it’s not life. It’s like there are zombies walking down this street.” Csaky passed Schwede’s tent every day, he needed to know he was safe. In the last months of his life, his tent caught fire and his hands were badly burned. He was hit by a car while cycling in the cycle lanes on Douglas Street. When he was taken to the emergency room at the Royal Jubilee Hospital, there wasn’t even a chair for him to sit on, Csaky said. While many support safe supply, no women believe it is the answer to the opioid crisis. “People will cut off their safe supply with things that are not safe and you still have the problems of overdose. Or they’ll sell the clean stuff because they’ll get more money for it and buy the stuff the dealers are selling,” Csaky said. “There’s no safe supply because Chris was in safe supply and he’s in a morgue right now,” Trauss added. “We needed to get to the root cause of why he was addicted. Where was his pain coming from that he can’t deal with. Where is the trauma?’ There have been more than 10,000 illegal drug deaths in BC since the province declared a public health emergency in April 2016, the BC coroner’s office reported this week. At least 1,095 people are believed to have died between January and June this year, including 80 in Greater Victoria and 33 in Nanaimo. Grant McKenzie, director of communications for Our Place, believes the veterinary sedative in Turquoise Down is being added to illegal drugs to make it skyrocket. “This drug surprised us with how quickly it hit people, stopped them breathing, and how devastating it was to our population,” he said. “We are all on alert. The staff is extremely attentive, watching out for beckoning people whose skin color turns blue. We want to make sure and check these people and make sure they’re breathing.” [email protected]
