Walking Through a Community of Fentanyl Addicts in Vancouver

※Originally published on note, Aug 16, 2025.

　I’ve arrived in Canada. Vancouver.

　When I see familiar American sights like an A&W towering in the city, it feels like I’ve returned to Okinawa. It’s almost like coming home.

　The center of Vancouver is remarkably safe. It has everything you need to live comfortably—shopping centers, supermarkets, cafés, and well-equipped public facilities. That is, of course, if you can ignore the fact that prices are about four or five times higher than in Japan.

　My current work situation allows me to sit down at a café, tap away at the keyboard like this, and that’s really all I need. So I spend my days progressing through my drafts while half-traveling through this pleasant city. It’s a perfect kind of refreshment, reducing my social interactions to the bare minimum.

　Soon, anime recording sessions will begin, and I’ll be commuting to the studio every week. So this period of traveling the world is also gradually coming to an end.

　…But.

　It’s not like I ever got on a plane looking for peace and quiet.

　There was a sight I absolutely needed to see with my own eyes, for the sake of future works and activities.

　Where there is strong light, there is always deep darkness behind it—and Canada, too, has its forgotten world. Just a few streets away from the stylish downtown lies a society that has been left behind.

Note(highlighted in blue): The area east of Gastown, particularly north of Columbia Street, is one of the most dangerous parts of Vancouver. It's best to avoid going there.

　The place I stepped into is, of course, listed in every guidebook as “the most dangerous area—avoid at all costs.” Even former residents consider it too risky to approach lightly, and if you go there as a tourist just to look around, there’s no guarantee of your safety.

　By the ocean.

　Now, let’s shift our focus to East Hastings Street.

　About ten minutes past the bustling downtown. At the police station around here, everything changes. Safety flips entirely.

　The fact that there’s such a clear boundary makes something evident:

　These drug users don’t necessarily want to impact broader society. They’re not trying to stand out.

　Right before this area is Gastown, a neighborhood where people dance wildly under the scent of marijuana—a kind of middle zone. From there, the structure is clear:

　safe downtown → nightlife and dance-fueled Gastown → drug users lying on the streets of the inner city.

　This clean division of space is fascinating.

　Gastown itself is also worth seeing, but I’ll leave it aside for now so as not to stray from the topic.

　Despite the city’s liveliness, few outsiders walk this area. Most of the shops are closed.

　Graffiti covers the walls, and in scattered tents, you see families—some with young people—sheltering from the night sky, inhaling something. And tonight, it’s raining.

　They were all—shockingly—continuously using drugs.

　Maybe it’s because it’s night.

　Maybe they just can’t stand bathing in moonlight while sober.

　The residents of East Hastings Street are people who have spilled out from the noise of the city just a few minutes away.

　Shops are tightly sealed behind iron bars, just in case.

　Still, it’s possible to shop, and maybe that’s an act of kindness.

　Whenever I’m in places like this, I always buy some candy. To show a bit of gratitude to the people who speak to me.

　Let’s get some sweet Hi-Chews.

　People here walk with their backs arched forward, zombie-like.

　The so-called “fentanyl zombies.”

　Fentanyl shuts down brain function so quickly that even standing upright becomes impossible. Their bodies, dulled by the drug, temporarily escape pain—but once the effect wears off, they’re assaulted by intense withdrawal symptoms. They inject again to stave it off, and their spines curve further.

　It’s like a modern Opium War playing out on these streets—where a drug born from cutting-edge medical science drags society down.

　As someone who created such a weird game…

　As someone who painfully understands the desire to forget this ugly reality through fleeting pleasure…

　I needed to witness this road with my own eyes.

　Walking around the city, I start sweating uncomfortably just from the heavy secondhand smoke. My head pounds.

　Apparently, fentanyl isn’t very effective when vaporized. But in any case, meth, marijuana, cocaine—every drug you can think of is here, and smoke fills every corner. As I walk, it inevitably builds up in my lungs.

　Because of a condition, I can’t breathe through my nose, so I always have my mouth open.

　Basically, I’ve become the worst kind of human Kirby—automatically inhaling every kind of drug smoke.

　At this point, I don’t even know which drug is making me dizzy anymore.

　But in a strange way, it worked in my favor.

　A lone, staggering East Asian wandering a sketchy street at night.

　To others, I probably didn’t look quite sane either. And once I looked like that, the people here accepted me.

　Of course, some were ready to offer drugs with a “Wanna buy?” attitude.

　But it wasn’t just that—they’d gather, like in the photos I took, and sit around smoking together.

　Almost always, someone in the group collapses, unable to endure.

　But since others are always around, they probably won’t die.

　There are also facilities—I'll talk about them later—where overdosing patients receive emergency care.

　In other words, drug users help each other survive without overthinking it.

　And maybe that’s okay.

　In a place where you’re allowed to lie down anywhere without judgment,

　I feel a strange relief—like this is closer to what being human should be.

　Hippie spirit to the extreme.

　I think I just… really like people.

　Their shirts are printed with characters from Naruto or Dragon Ball.

　When I mention I’m from Japan, using anime as a conversation starter, they smile and proudly show off the Kakashi-sensei tattoo on their back.

　I give them Hi-Chews as a token of friendship.

　On the street, one man was tripping alone, dancing clumsily.

　They called out—“Hey!”—and pulled him into their circle.

　I don’t know if they knew him already.

　But like that, they spend the night together on the street, using drugs to forget their pain.

　There’s nothing violent about it.

　Sure, their tripping bodies move strangely, so I wouldn’t dare call it safe.

　But unless provoked, drug addicts don’t lash out at passersby.

　Probably…

　Maybe with meth, it’s possible.

　But with fentanyl, their backs are so bent they can’t even make eye contact.

　They don’t look up at the moon.

　Even outside this district, downtown itself becomes home to the homeless at night.

　They claim the spaces under awnings,

　collecting aluminum cans from trash bins and cleaning up the city.

　Sometimes with their asses sticking out.

　In a city where prices are four to five times higher than Japan’s, once you fall off the grid, it’s nearly impossible to get back on.

　They wander the night, pushed out of the nightlife zones,

　eventually drowning in cheap drugs to forget reality.

　When we hear “street drug addicts,”  it sounds antisocial in a Japanese context.

　But are they really going against society?

　They didn’t resist society.

　They simply couldn’t fit into it.

　And so they’re hidden away, rendered “invisible” by the city center.

　Guidebooks end with one line:

　“Do not approach—unsafe area.”

　But is drowning in drugs to forget the cold and pain of the streets really a crime?

　I think—they’re human, just like us.

　If not, they wouldn’t call out to each other and help one another under this freezing sky.

　Even on East Hastings Street,

　there’s an undeniable order and kindness among the drug users.

　If they have something to say, I absolutely want to hear it.

　Every time I travel abroad, they talk to me with joy.

　Even though I’m a suspicious-looking Asian guy wandering alone.

　They don’t care about that kind of thing.

　So I decided not to care either.

　There really are homeless people who might try to steal your passport and attack you without warning — so yeah, at the end of the day, everything’s your own responsibility.

　There’s no such thing as a truly “safe” place anywhere.

　Japan really is a blessedly safe country.

　There’s no need to throw yourself into danger.

　That said, it’s not like the government is leaving these streets completely unattended.

　Sure, it’s not a problem that can be solved easily—but for example, there are spaces like this, set up to isolate overdose patients in critical condition.

　When someone suffers from a bad trip or takes too much and ends up on the brink of death, government workers are prepared to treat them properly on one of these beds.

　There are even facilities designed to help users gradually step down from hard drugs.

　To escape deep dependence on fentanyl, they transition slowly to softer drugs.

　If it means pulling someone back from the brink, then even cocaine or marijuana is accepted, at least for the time being.

　It’s a kind of welfare system that’s hard to imagine in peaceful Japan—

but it exists, very much so.

　Dogs kept by the homeless.

　Maybe because they can easily get food from the city center, the dogs look surprisingly healthy.

　There’s no way someone like me could fix the situation from the ground up—

but still, people and animals find ways to live, fiercely and tenaciously.

　When you think about the fentanyl crisis, the legalization of marijuana makes a strange kind of sense.

　Whether it’s “right” or not, nobody knows.

　But when there’s a whole “nation” involved,

　each country has its own ethics and rules.

　Even so—

　This secondhand smoke is killing me!

　The magic mushroom shop is… kind of stylish.

　I’ve only ever been interested in the hallucinogenic types, so if I were to indulge, it’d be something like that.

　I messaged Akano, a fellow game writer, and he told me the arcade cabinet inside the shop is Centipede by ATARI.

　Totally unrelated, and yet somehow it feels perfectly psychedelic.

　Respect.

　I got pestered for money like crazy, so I tried offering Hi-Chews instead.

　But then I figured, “Screw that, I’m not giving these out for free,”

　so I asked if I could take a photo and surprisingly, the old guy was totally into it.

　And so, the night in Vancouver goes on.

　Elderly folks turning a late-night café into an impromptu chess tournament.

Someday, I want to live like that too.

　That happy, that free.