With deep, expressive brown eyes and spiky hair, 18-year-old Danny Snyder sits in a booth and shares his story of drug use and addiction that began when he was just 15.

When the Comox Valley teen first started using drugs, it was experimentation. He found it to be a form of escapism from things he did not want to think about or deal with.

“There’s definitely lots of reasons that people get into (drug use). Sometimes it’s to fit in, or for me, it was definitely to escape. There were a lot of reasons growing up why I’d want to escape,” explained Snyder.

His move from experimentation to addiction was swift.

“It felt like it was progressing slowly, but over the course of a few years, that's a pretty quick transformation, from experimentation to near-death experiences with fentanyl. It snea

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