Ratings and Reviews by Cerfeuil

Because I don't make enough for how I use to be called a phase or a Bay Street afternoon-pick-me-up. I don't have the economic stability to actually fix the various reasons why my life is fucked up right now and quick fixes are the only ones accessible to me. I'm not affluent, so what I take is too street, and therefore morally reprehensible. There's nothing else to do in this shitty small town. There's no one else to do either. Because OSAP. Because child support. Because I'm homeless. Because I'm hungry. Because I can't afford to come down.

I am poor enough to be called an addict.

---

I'm not

✔ white

✔ rich

✔ able-bodied

enough to be a user, so I'm shamed as an addict.

---

Found this game because it was linked in The end of the WORD as we know it, an art gallery of sorts that linked to other interactive fiction games. This game was one of the more obscure ones included. I found its discussion of drug use, and how drug users/addicts are treated, to be touching. In the US, where I'm from, both the rich and poor use drugs and become addicted to them, but the poor are more likely to be shamed for it. There are additional complexities around race and disability, which are discussed in-game. The game takes as a given that the player is familiar with criticism of the War on Drugs in the US and Canada and its history, and references arguments like these from the Drug Policy Alliance nonprofit, which advocates for less criminalization of drug use in the US.

For example, one of the historical facts the game cites is the criminalization of opium in the US after it became associated with poor Chinese workers:

Because my people were Chinese railroad workers whose puffing made lawmakers scared they were fucking all the white women, so they criminalized opium (except chugging and shooting it, because that was a white clean habit).

The association of opium use and poor Chinese-Americans, contributing to anti-Chinese sentiment in the US, is directly related to the forced import of opium into China by foreign traders, primarily British, in the 19th century. The two Opium Wars fought in the 1800s were a failed attempt by the Chinese government to prevent the illegal importation of opium into China by foreign merchants. Losing the war meant ports were forcibly opened to Western countries to keep doing business in, and this business included selling opium. Meanwhile, many wealthy American families, such as the Delanos, family of US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, made fortunes in the Chinese opium trade. (Sources: the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on the Opium Wars, and this article about American families and the Chinese opium trade, and this article on anti-Chinese racism and opium addiction.)

This is just for one sentence in the game, and other sentences reference statistics or histories I'm less familiar with. But the game isn't just about the history of opioids in the US. The core of it is about administrating Naloxone, a medication that reverses the effects of opioids and can restore breathing after opioid overdose. The story involves seeing someone suffering from an opioid overdose and saving their life through Naloxone.

I think a certain level of familiarity with the facts is best; I don't know if people who disagree with the message of this game, or are unfamiliar with the arguments, would find it affecting. I personally liked it.