In the shoes of… | A coroner in front of overdoses

Julie-Kim Godin is Coroner. Saying herself “arrested” by the many cases of overdose on which she is called to shed light, she recently wrote a series of recommendations intended to prevent these dramas. Here is the deaf crisis in his eyes.

“When you do Coroner’s work, there is not a case that ends well. There is someone who dies in history all the time. »»

You might think Julie-Kim Godin is doing the most depressing job in the world. His work: to conduct investigations when deaths occur in violent or obscure circumstances. Murders, suicides and domestic violence punctuate his daily life.

In recent years, a reality has also taken an increasingly large place in its professional life: overdoses. New drugs that are constantly stronger and mixed arriving in the streets, in schools, on the Internet. In Quebec, they make an average of more than one victim … every day. Each time, a coroner conducts an investigation.

“The question of overdoses, we unfortunately see it daily,” says Julie-Kim Godin. Of course it touches us because we see concrete cases. When I see reports that say: it could be your son or daughter, I know it. Each case that we examine is someone’s son or daughter. »»

However, she refuses to be won by pessimism.

“For me, it’s a bit of a moral duty to highlight what happened and to be able to learn from it,” she said.

To understand his profession and his state of mind in the face of the overdoses that surge, let’s go back last September.

Julie-Kim Godin then receives a call while she is on duty. A man has just been lifeless in the early morning near a pharmacy in the Saint-Henri district, in Montreal. He still has a lighter and a pipe in his hands.

You may imagine the coroner, scalpel in hand, carry out an autopsy to understand the cause of death. In the United States, this is often how it happens. But not in Quebec. Julie-Kim Godin is not a doctor, but a lawyer.

His role: to ask the questions and to order the analysis of experts that will allow him to shed light on the death. “We are a bit like the conductor,” explains the one who still goes regularly to the field to fully understand the circumstances of tragedies.

In this specific case, it requests that an autopsy be made by a pathologist. Biological fluids are taken from the victim. We discover several drugs including cocaine, bromazolam, methamphetamine and fluorofentanyl (a powerful drug similar to fentanyl). The coroner also requests that analyzes be carried out on the pipe.

By asking questions and examining the documents and analyzes, Julie-Kim Godin releases a portrait of the victim and the circumstances of his death. Otabie Wilson was 40 years old. He suffered from a drug use disorder and mental health problems. He was homeless. Despite his many problems, he did not benefit from any medical or psychosocial follow -up.

La Coroner suspects that Mr. Wilson went to consume cocaine near a pharmacy in the hope of being saved in case of overdose. It hypothesizes that bromazolam and fluorofentanyl, substances rarely mixed with cocaine, have been consumed without its knowledge. These drugs would have accumulated in the pipe used by Mr. Wilson in previous uses, perhaps by another user.

“Did Wilson knew everything he was inhaling?” Asked the coroner in her report.

Usually the report would have ended there. In two well -packed pages, the victim’s life trajectory is established and the circumstances of his death are described. I myself read hundreds of these reports as part of a major report on the overdoses made a few years ago^⁠1.

This time, however, Julie-Kim Godin continued to write. She mentions that she and her colleagues looked at 459 dead by overdose in the year 2023 alone.

“These are 459 too much deaths,” she writes.

She explains to me having felt “challenged” by these chain tragedies, often cruelly similar.

The result is a series of recommendations addressed both to the Ministry of Health and Social Services and in Health Quebec as in the City of Montreal and Health Canada.

In bulk, Julie-Kim Godin recommends that Quebec will set up a new strategy against overdoses. That supervised consumption centers are more numerous and open 24 hours a day. That campaigns are launched to destigmatize drug consumers and the services that help them. That a new interdepartmental planner plan is launched.

Julie-Kim Godin would like to say that Otabie Wilson would probably be alive today if a supervised consumer center had been opened at the time when he consumed. A center where we could have provided him with an unused pipe. Where we could have analyzed his drug. Where we could have rescued it in case of overdose.

While waiting for decision-makers to take action, Julie-Kim Godin will continue to throw light where too many people refuse to look. To dissect and expose the mechanics of each of these dramas that have become daily so that they do not sink into oblivion.

“Sometimes I listened to the radio and we talked about the legacies of a writer who died recently,” says the Coroner. But these people too will leave a legacy. We can – and we must – learn from their journey. »»

1. Read the big report “the invisible epidemic”

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