From Hollywood to Hastings: Vancouver actor recounts struggle with addiction and recovery
As part of a specific sequence, World-wide News is exploring the struggles of individuals living on the Downtown Eastside. In section one particular, a Vancouver man’s journey from Hollywood to Hastings exhibits how tricky it is to get out of a cycle of habit.
Bernie Coulson has been termed a genius.
The Vancover-born actor and producer was a key character in the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster The Accused opposite Oscar winner Jodie Foster and appeared in demonstrates from The X-Data files to Intelligence.
But the man who the moment shared an condominium with Brad Pitt in Los Angeles now life in the V6A, 1 of the poorest postal codes in Canada.
The when soaring star, now in his late 50s, has a new role: seeking to continue to be alive on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
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In a likelihood assembly with World Information in the vicinity of Major and Hastings in Oct, Coulson describes how he’s snorting governing administration-issued prescription drugs as a result of a straw as he waits to get into treatment method.
“I’m so fortunate this last time. Six months in the past when I overdosed, that was it. It was last and it scared the residing crap out of me and I do not want to go again there,” he claimed.
“I really do not want that any more. I just want to be me, which was crack a couple cold kinds following perform.”
Bernie Coulson.
World News
When requested regardless of whether he wants to stay on risk-free supply, he suggests no and that it is “not so protected.”
Coulson is decided not to develop into a further coroner statistic disclosed in a monthly push release. Additional than 10,000 persons have died in B.C. from a toxic drug offer because a general public overall health crisis was declared in 2016.
Giuseppe Ganci describes how he felt when his friend Don Presland was dying from an overdose.
“When I obtained to the healthcare facility, that’s when I obtained mad. I got truly mad,” mentioned Ganci, the director of local community development for Past Doorway Recovery Society in New Westminster.
“Donnie was in this hospital. He’s received all these nurses, (intensive care unit) persons, devices. He’s bought anything because he’s dying and they have been ready to pull the plug.”
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Ganci tells World-wide News Presland didn’t have the money to spend for personal addiction providers and a federal government-funded mattress with all the supports ended up unavailable when he necessary them.
He believed the rough price of Presland’s healthcare facility stay for considerably less than a week was far more than $10,000.
“The system is put in which when anyone is overdosing and dying, it is pink carpet cure. Here’s the ambulance. Here’s the medical center. Here’s the expert services,” he claimed.
“But the moment you get perfectly and you appear out of your overdose and you say ‘I need aid,’ oh very well, get in line, go on welfare, how substantially dollars do you make? It totally improvements.”
Again on the Downtown Eastside, Coulson receives some horrible news. A excellent friend’s brother handed absent from an overdose.
In the meantime, Coulson stays ready for rehab.
“This is my option to go. I have been 17 times right before for other men and women. So I want to do it this time. I have bought absolutely nothing to cover and I’m heading to make the ideal of it.”
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