16. Arizona O'Neill: Opioids and Organs

16. Arizona O'Neill: Opioids and Organs

It’s 2015, and Montreal author-illustrator Arizona O’Neill grieves at the hospital bed of her father, a man she hardly knew, brain dead after a fentanyl overdose. Doctors encourage her to act quickly to recast him as a hero by way of organ donations. Distraught, O’Neill makes a decision that will haunt her for the rest of her life. Her heartwrenching graphic novel memoir, Opioids and Organs, captures her struggles to come to terms with her father’s death and her role in making his life’s last decision—as well as inconvenient truths about the organ industry’s codependence on the opioid crisis, and its exploitation of society’s outcasts. She speaks with Garth Mullins, harm-reduction activist and author of Crackdown: Surviving and Resisting the War on Drugs.

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