In 2015, at the start of the opioid crisis, Arizona O’Neill was called to a hospital in Montreal. Her father was on life support after a fentanyl overdose, and wasn’t expected to recover. He was 41. Although they were estranged, as his next of kin, it was up to O’Neill to decide whether to donate his organs.
In her debut graphic novel, Arizona O’Neill traces the connection between overdose deaths and organ donations.Julie Artacho/Supplied
She eventually consented to the donation, but in the months that followed, O’Neill questioned her choice. Wasn’t it disturbing, she thought, that society places so little value on people struggling with addiction when they are still alive – but profits off of the use of their organs after they die?
“In mid-2020, when the opioid crisis boomed during the pandemic, I started to think, ‘That’s a lot of organs,’” she says. She began to wonder if organ donations had historically risen alongside overdose deaths. After some research, she discovered they had. According to data from several provinces across Canada, for example, between 2014 and 2017 – the early days of the opioid crisis – there was a 294-per-cent increase in organ donors who’d died of overdoses.
In her new graphic memoir, Opioids and Organs, O’Neill recounts the experience of grieving her father while grappling with this grim reality. The book also places her experience in context, tracing the exploitative history of the organ donation industry from its early, experimental inception to its connection to the slave trade, to ethical issues it still presents today.
O’Neill spoke with The Globe about the book.
How did this project get started?
When my dad died, I became fixated on organ donation. I was dogged by this haunting imagery: My dad had a tattoo of my mother’s name on his arm, for example, and I knew his skin had been donated. Everywhere I’d go, I’d look at people’s tattoos to see if they were of my mother’s name – even though that’s obviously not how skin grafts work. I couldn’t help obsessing over it.
Having artist parents, it was instilled in me that it’s good to turn your trauma into art. So I always knew that I wanted to do a project on organ donation. I just didn’t initially know what form it would take.
Arizona O'Neill/Supplied
You’ve previously worked in film. Why did you choose to make this project a graphic novel?
I first wrote this book as a script and then drew it as a storyboard – so, for me, the crafts of graphic novel writing and filmmaking are closely related. Because the story takes place so deeply in my imagination and is told with so many fantastical elements, it could only really work with me drawing it. It wouldn’t translate well on film.
Graphic novels are also a perfect place to talk about difficult subject matter, because people’s guards are down: There’s an openness that comes with looking at beautiful images.
What do you hope that people will take away from this memoir?
For me, the biggest point of the book was to create empathy for people who are addicted to drugs, and their families – and to remind readers that the opioid crisis affects all of us. I don’t think that my story can change the entire organ donation system. I just want an acknowledgment that people who use drugs are being sacrificed in this strange way. The fact that so many organ donations have resulted from the opioid crisis is something that we never discuss or acknowledge.
Drawn from both real and imagined lives, these four graphic novels delight the mind and eye equally
On top of that, various governments in this country are introducing policies like involuntary holds and forced treatment, or the closing of safe injection sites. These interventions don’t actually help people suffering from addiction – they just make them more invisible.
You’re no stranger to having your life reflected on the page. Your mother, the novelist Heather O’Neill, has previously written about her experience as a single mother raising you. Did you have any feelings about putting such personal narrative out into the world from your own perspective?
Absolutely. And as I’ve gotten closer to the book’s release, it’s become even more apparent how hard it’s going to be. Before the book was finished, I had hardened myself to the story. I’d put my heart in this iron-clad case and I thought it was all going to be fine. But there’s something about writing a memoir and talking about the trauma in the book that’s a little bit retraumatizing. And then there’s also a feeling of wondering what your loved ones will think.
Does having had your life reflected through the eyes of somebody else in writing change the way that you navigate doing that yourself?
I think it’s actually given me a lot of agency to write about my life and my upbringing because I grew up not thinking sharing these types of anecdotes was strange at all. People used to ask me if I had any issues with my mom writing about our life so openly, but it never seemed weird to me. Recently my mom was saying she kind of felt as though she’d absorbed all the stories, and there wouldn’t be any left for me to tell. But now I’ve started writing memoirs and she’s surprised at how we lived the same path but have different perspectives of it.
There’s a lot of humour in the book, which is not something you always see in writing about the opioid crisis. Why was it important for you to approach the story that way?
I always approach difficult subject matter with beauty and humour in my work. I had a very non-traditional childhood in a very difficult family. There’s a lot of darkness there, and I think you need to have humour in life to be able to survive it and thrive in it. Sometimes it’s not even something that I necessarily do on purpose. I did a live reading the other night and there were laughs in a scene where I didn’t think that was going to happen.
You mentioned working on the book was at times retraumatizing. Did it also ever help you process?
The original ending of my first draft was very cynical. But before I finalized the book, I went to Paris and visited the catacombs. The experience was surprisingly calming. There was something beautiful about the way that all these Parisians, regardless of their backgrounds, were buried together in the catacombs, united by their deaths. I went there to face death, and I was very changed by the experience. I came home and rewrote the ending of my book – and it took a much more uplifting turn. I had a lot of death-related anxiety for years after my dad died, and I actually do find that it’s gone now.