Among the intricate, graffiti-style artwork Brandon Mark created during his lifetime, there is one piece that stands out for his mother Diana Enns.
The picture features jagged streaks of colour – greens, blues, yellows and more – criss-crossing a white background. Enns said he never liked it, but she did.
“He drew it in 2013, when this addiction first started,” Enns recalled. “And in the bottom right corner, he wrote down the words: I’m lost. Find me.”
Brandon was 28 years old when he died this past week, and had been struggling with an opioid addiction for about a decade.
Enns said along with his artistic talents, her son was empathetic and sensitive.
“He was really caring and always watching out for others,” she said, and added he had a way with animals and helped friends who were in need.
“He was really good at being objective when somebody else was struggling. But he didn’t know how to do it for himself.”
Enns said Brandon was also fun-loving, and was the kind of person people wanted to follow.
“If he was here, and had tapped into his own potential, I know he would have been an inspirational speaker,” she said. “He was supposed to make a difference in the world.”
Rob, Brandon’s stepfather, comforted her.
“Maybe he still can, sweetie.”
Brandon’s death this month comes during a year that is now the deadliest ever in B.C.’s ongoing overdose crisis. As of the end of October, the toxic drug supply had claimed 1,782 lives in the province in 2021.
Enns said her son was prescribed an opioid when he was 18, following a shoulder injury at work.
“The doctor gave him fentanyl for pain ... he was hooked from the get-go,” she said. “He said that the fentanyl was like a warm blanket. That’s how he described it, that it took away all his pain, all his anxiety went away, all his depression went away.”
After that, Enns said when her son wanted to quit, the agony of withdrawal was too much. He tried methadone and suboxone, but would be ill again the next morning. Neither of them worked for him.
Enns said he also tried treatment, multiple times. One time, he waited three months to get into a program, only to change his mind by the time they were able to take him. At the last facility, Enns said it cost the family $10,000 for two months. She said this final recovery program had communication issues, and the transitional housing they offered for the second stage of his treatment was problematic.
“He sends me some crazy pictures, and it’s disgusting, deplorable,” she remembered. “And he says, ‘I can’t stay here.’”
Brandon’s stepfather said the quarters were also cramped.
“They had them stacked in there like cordwood,” he said. “There were two bunk beds in there, so four people to a room.”
“A tiny room,” Enns added. “It was not a place anybody should be.”
Brandon eventually ended up coming back to Vancouver Island for a week at the end of November, then returned to Burnaby. Enns said he had a plan to find a place with a friend from the program, but he never got the chance. She said he had also thought about going to California to be with his father and brother.
“The ironic side is he never went, because he said, ‘If I go to L.A., I’ll end up on Skid Row and I’ll die,’” she said. “But it happened here anyway, because our system is just as messed up.”
Along with monitoring of the standards and conditions at recovery facilities, Enns and her husband want to see more mental health supports for people seeking help with substance use.
“The treatment is one thing, that’s fine,” Rob said. “So you detox for 30, 60, 90 days, or whatever. But there’s no follow-up afterwards and that’s where the whole thing breaks down ... You’re sober and you’ve got some tools, but how do you integrate into life again when you’ve missed so much of your life prior to that?”
Enns said health-care workers with expertise in the field should be assigned to people as they make their way through treatment.
“There should be social workers or even addiction care workers going to these places,” she said. “For those of us who can’t afford $800 or $1,000 a day. Those are the the ones that have the health care, because it’s private.”
Enns also wants to see other options for conducting wellness checks, aside from police.
“The crazy part is you’re dialling 911, you don’t want the police going there. My son’s not a criminal. He was an addict,” she said. “He was addicted. He was sick.”
She said she had called the police on previous occasions, and it had upset him. Before Brandon’s death, Enns said, they weren’t able to get hold of him for a few days.
“That morning, the first thing on my phone was 911,” she said. “And I’m a spiritual person and I thought, ‘Oh my God, should I be calling 911?’ And I thought to myself, ‘I can’t, because if I call it’s going to be the cops going to his door.’ If it had been a social worker, I would have called. I wouldn’t have hesitated. I might have saved his life.”
Enns and her husband are asking people to try to understand addiction is not a choice.
“Open your hearts,” she said. “Get rid of the judgement. Get rid of the stigma. Please don’t judge these people. They are hurting. They don’t want to be where they are.”
Rob said people living with substance use are still stigmatized and marginalized in society.
“It’s not a choice,” he said. “It’s someone in pain that is basically hurting and numbing the pain the only way they know how.”
Enns is now looking at planning a funeral for Brandon in Metro Vancouver, where he had many friends. She’s also been hearing from them on a memorial page she’s created online, and about the ways her son had an impact on their lives.
She’s hoping people begin to show more compassion, and that the system changes to give those fighting addiction the kind of support they need.
“These people are lost,” she said. “They have no way to navigate through life. And they’ve been lost for so long.”
At her home on the island, Enns has set up Christmas village decorations, a tradition from Brandon’s childhood.
She said her collection began with some cheaper houses from a dollar store, but once she managed to buy some nicer replacements as the years went by, Brandon never wanted her to get rid of the old ones.
“He said, ‘This is the poor part of the city, and this is the rich people’s houses,’” she laughed. “And that was his little thing.”
Enns hadn’t brought the houses out since his addiction began, but this year, she decided to bring them back. She had been hoping he would come home to see them again.
BC overdose crisis: Island family calls for more supports | CTV News - CTV News Vancouver
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