The Best Place: Addiction, Intervention, and Living and Dying Young in Vancouver

by Danya Fast

In both local and international imaginations, Vancouver, Canada, is often celebrated as one of the world’s most beautiful, cosmopolitan, and livable cities. Simultaneously, the city continues to be ground zero for successive waves of public health emergency and intervention, including a recent and unprecedented drug overdose crisis driven by the proliferation of illicitly manufactured fentanyl and related analogs in the local drug supply. In The Best Addiction, Intervention, and Living and Dying Young in Vancouver , Danya Fast explores these politics of place from the perspectives of young people who use drugs. Those who are the subject of this book were in many ways relegated to the social, spatial, and economic margins of the city. Yet, they were also often at the very center of city life and state projects, including the project of protecting life in the context of the current overdose crisis.

246 pages, Paperback

Published November 10, 2023

About the author

Dr. Danya Fast, PhD, is a Research Scientist at the BC Centre on Substance Use and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. She is also an Associate Member in the Department of Anthropology at UBC. Since 2007, her ethnographic research in Vancouver, Canada and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania has focused on the relationship between health and place among young people who use drugs in the social, spatial and economic margins of the city.

Reviews

[KK Rebecca Lai]

The homelessness and drug problem is hard to ignore in Vancouver. I've always wondered who these people are, what they've been through in life that led them to here. This chronicle of all the people Danya met over her years as a field researcher really provided some insight into this landscape. One of the things that struck me the most is how often her subjects felt bored. They don't have a place to live and don't have a job, and even when they do find housing through social programs, there's often not a whole lot to do. It's so much easier, and way more interesting, to get some money together and get high, because the alternative is just... a whole lot of nothing. Even as some of them get out, and try to live a "normal life", a lot of them get drawn back into the Downtown drug scene, because they felt isolated and alone and bored. For those still out there, I hope they find the life that they are looking for. Vancouver is truly one of the best places if you can get a life together, or it could easily be the worst.

[Devon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful looks into the lives of individuals that I may pass by each day during my commute through the city. It provides a perspective on life, that I may never get to see, despite having a looking glass view into some of these lives on the street. As the author said, its a book about endings. And at the end, I couldnt help but just say, fuck.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

more academic than I was hoping didn’t enjoy having to skip past all the citations lolol the stories were interesting and maybe give more perspective to seeing this population frequently in the ER 🤔🤔🤔🤔