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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Garth Mullins

GARTH MULLINS is a harm-reduction activist, award-winning journalist, writer, broadcaster and musician. He is the author of Crackdown:
Surviving and Resisting the War on Drugs, an organizer with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, and executive producer and host of the award-winning podcast Crackdown. He lives in Vancouver.

Arizona O’Neill

ARIZONA O’NEILL is a Montreal-based author and illustrator. She is the illustrator of Nelly Arcan’s L’enfant dans le miroir, and Heather O’Neill’s Valentine in Montreal. Her comics have appeared in Hazlitt, Exclaim! and Canadian Geographic. She has created animated videos for many outlets including CBC. Opioids and Organs is her debut graphic novel.