Harm Reduction Advocate Focuses on Quality of Life
By Luke Schmaltz, VOICES Newsletter Editor
TJ Thompson works in harm reduction and community outreach. “Currently, I am working to get legislation passed for supervised injection sites in Massachusetts,” he begins. “Which would give us the opportunity to create pilot programs for the next 10 years. I talk to legislators, I attend rallies, I organize people to speak out about what overdose prevention centers can bring to different communities and how they can save lives.”
Grief is a consistent element in Thompson's daily work. “Every day, I talk to somebody that is in their own grief space,” he says. “But that's not my specialty, my goal and my focus is keeping people alive. I run into a lot of people affected by the death of someone they care about, someone they were compelled to help, who was struggling with substance use. People working in harm reduction deal with a lot of loss. I would never want to say it has become normalized, but it is expected. Regardless, it's a great motivator to keep doing the work.”
Complicated Grief
Thompson’s circumstances are complicated. “I lost my husband, Stephen Kelley, about a year-and-a-half ago,” he explains. “He had complications from cirrhosis. He also used drugs. He didn’t succumb to an overdose, but it was a form of substance use. He was fine and then one day he dropped dead in my kitchen. It felt like he overdosed, because I had a normal conversation with him one day, and then bam, there was a body bag being rolled out of my house.”
I’m in therapy and I am also in a grief support group. Everybody has their own grief, their own way they are going to deal with it, their own path, and their own relationship with it.”
Thompson worked alongside his partner in harm reduction. “We were working on getting overdose prevention centers legalized,” he explains.“ I’ve also lost family members, friends, and clientele. His death changed the way I view grief. It turned my life upside down.”
Thompson’s loss, in conjunction with his work, has helped build skills for dealing with grief. “Before my husband passed away, I would become very upset when people died. But, as a service provider, you get to this point where you learn to cope. You learn how to talk about it with other people. You learn how to integrate it into your own life.”
Fighting Stigma
After Stephen died, Thompson became isolated. “I disappeared for a while,” he says. “I had to step back, and that's why I stopped speaking out for just a few months. I was on the Substance Use Advisory Committee for the City of Cambridge, and I stopped participating.”
“Everyone knew he wasn’t well, and they all assumed it was an overdose. The thing is it doesn't matter how he died. But I had to grapple with it. It is a battle to deal with the stigma of someone you love dying of an overdose. We worked so hard to address stigma toward drug use and the way it is described. The last thing we wanted to do was to say, ‘Oh no. It wasn’t an overdose. Don’t think that.’ I seemed like a grievous look into his life, and I felt needed to defend the cause of his death. I felt like a hypocrite.”
In the middle of grieving, I needed to set the record straight. This person that worked so hard for this cause didn’t die from an overdose. He didn’t want to be a statistic, he wanted to be remembered for his contribution.
“I felt so strange. When you lose someone that close, you don't know how to deal with anything. I had no idea how to keep going. There's so many other things you're dealing with. He was an outgoing, vocal supporter of overdose prevention centers, and yes, he passed away, but he didn’t overdose. I wish that wasn't a conversation I ever had to have with people, because it shouldn't have mattered either way. Regardless, the stigma toward his death was an added complication to my grief journey.”
Despite his efforts to be transparent about Stephen’s death, Thompson encountered stigma, even from people he hadn’t seen in years. “It was more prevalent than I thought it would be. People would say, ‘Oh, I guess it finally happened. Yep, he was a troubled person.’ I had a lot of anger.”
Down and Back Up
Similar to many, Thompson’s reaction to loss was irrational at times. “I knew others were grieving over Stephen, but I tried to take ownership of all the grief. It was only mine, and that was not helpful. I used to want to keep people alive and give them a chance, but my whole life became grief. I almost drank myself to death. I ended up in the ICU about six months after he passed. I was coughing up blood. I did not realize that my drinking had climbed to that level, because at that point, I had been drinking for 20 years. That was last July. When I came out, I said, ‘I’m done,’ and I haven’t had a drink since.”
When Thompson emerged, he was further motivated to help people. “The situation lit a bigger fire under me to work harder to keep folks alive so more people don't have to go through the despair and pain that myself and people I work alongside experience all the time. So my focus usually isn't so much on death. It's the quality of life.”
Thompson is always on the lookout for new ways of making a contribution. He also works for the Massachusetts Overdose Prevention Helpline. “I had wanted to be a phone line operator for years,” he says. “This position is unique because you never know what you’ll be walking into from one day to the next. It's like a virtual overdose prevention site. People die from overdoses because they use drugs alone. Nobody dies of an overdose when they are surrounded by people who are trained to administer Narcan or who can call 911.”
What's really cool about this service is, people can call into the helpline before using. As operators, we ask their name, we find out where they are, which can be anywhere such a house, out in public, or in a department store bathroom – anywhere, really. Then, we find out what substance they're using and how they plan to take it, and we provide support. We hear them out, we sit with them, or wait on the phone while they use.”
“After that, what they want to talk about is up to them. We listen to their breathing and speech patterns, and If they become unresponsive, we activate EMS. We tell them exactly what the person took and exactly where they are.“
“I wish Stephen was still around to be a part of this. We did street outreach together, and we watched each other reverse other people’s overdoses so many times. It’s sad, but I'm proud of the work that we did, and that I can continue to do it to honor his memory. His death did not deter me.”