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home / 世界杯决赛2022

coquitlam parents hope the overdose death of their 16-year-old daughter can save the lives of others

"i was scared to death. i knew she was gone." — roya ghahramani, on the moment she realized her 16-year-old daughter had succumbed to a fatal overdose

by lori culbert

oct 29 2022
read time 11 minute read
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the parents of sufia abdollahi, 16, who died of an overdose in july, are concerned that not enough information about the overdose crisis is directed at youth, and that there are not enough resources to help them. photo: arlen redekop arlen redekop / png
when roya ghahramani opened her fridge one saturday morning she found a greek salad her 16-year-old daughter sufia had made for her to take to work that day, with a note that read: “best mother, best sister, best friend, best angel. have a wonderful day, my love. sufia.”
that same morning, sufia sent her father ramin abdollahi a lighthearted text asking him to join her and her mother for dinner at a restaurant the next evening, since he had been away on a long business trip. she signed off with three emojis: a crying-with-laughter face, a happy alien, and a smiling cat.
that saturday night before bed, sufia, an only child who had just finished grade 10 and worked part-time at mcdonald’s, apologized to her mother for causing stress over her occasional struggles with mental health and drug use. ghahramani recalls comforting her daughter, and then telling her to get some sleep because they had plans the next day to get manicures.
“she said, ‘okay.’ and then she sent me some texts and she says, ‘i love you.'”
after falling asleep around midnight, ghahramani startled awake at 4 a.m. perhaps driven by a mother’s instinct, she ran into her daughter’s room. the teen was sitting on the floor, her face leaning against the bed. blood trickled from her mouth. her skin was cold.
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“i was scared to death. i knew she was gone,” ghahramani recalled in an emotional interview three months later.

sufia was one of 192 british columbians who died from toxic drugs in july . so, too, was her 16-year-old friend, who is believed to have taken the same drugs on july 23 and was later found unresponsive in her coquitlam home.

an average of six people a day fatally overdose in b.c. due to the toxic drug supply, which has claimed more than 10,000 lives since the province declared a public health emergency in 2016.

roya ghahramani weeps while talking about the overdose death of her only child, sufia abdollahi. photo: arlen redekop
roya ghahramani weeps while talking about the overdose death of her only child, sufia abdollahi. photo: arlen redekop arlen redekop / png
ghahramani and abdollahi want to share their daughter’s story to warn other parents not to be complacent. that the poisoned drug supply is indiscriminate. that victims can include a 16-year-old girl who played the piano, took wrestling lessons, loved art and made her mother’s lunch.
“she was so kind and affectionate and generous. she was really so sweet, exceptionally sweet,” ghahramani said.

youth under 19 represent just one or two per cent of b.c.’s drug toxicity deaths, but the grim tally of those who fatally overdose grows each year: from 12 deaths in 2016 to 29 last year. there were already 22 young lives lost by august this year, according to the most recent statistics from the coroners service .

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“the numbers have increased for young people,” said dr. jennifer charlesworth, b.c.’s representative for children and youth. “we are seeing almost double the numbers that we did, for example, when the public health emergency was declared in 2016. we’re on track for the highest year again this year.”
the crisis is also having a “damaging effect” on the escalating number of youth who overdose and survive, often with lasting injuries. as well as the growing group who have lost parents, relatives and friends, she said.

public warnings are often directed at the segment of the population with the most overdoses — middle-aged men — and more need to be directed toward youth. in addition, the health and social service system for young people struggling with drugs remains “fragmented and inadequate,” charlesworth said, despite her recommendations four years ago that the government vastly improve it.

the last note written by sufia before her death, tattooed on mother’s arm. photo: arlen redekop
the last note written by sufia before her death, tattooed on mother’s arm. photo: arlen redekop arlen redekop / png
sufia, for example, waited to get a mental health diagnosis and then waited to see a psychiatrist. she was finally able to book an appointment for july 27 — three days after she died.
“we did everything to get an earlier appointment. it wasn’t possible,” abdollahi said.
b.c.’s ndp government said it has worked “urgently” since being elected five years ago to improve services for substance use and mental illness, including those for youth, but admits there is still more work to do given the unabated overdose crisis.

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“while we’ve been adding services and supports in an unprecedented way, we are swimming against a rising tide of need,” sheila malcolmson, mental health and addictions minister, said in an email. “i am committed to continuing to expand and evolve our government’s response to the public health emergency.”
ghahramani and abdollahi hope sufia’s story will reinforce the need for more supports for youth, offer some help to parents, and warn teens that being young is not an antidote to the poisoned drug supply.
“we are trying to raise awareness, to give information, to tell our story. and even if one kid, one teenager, is saved, then i and roya, we will have the feeling that the death of our only child was not without any cause,” abdollahi said.
“we try to make this message as powerful as possible, what drugs can do.”
sufia abdollahi (centre), with her father ramin abdollahi and mother roya ghahramani in this undated family photo.
sufia abdollahi (centre), with her father ramin abdollahi and mother roya ghahramani in this undated family photo. arlen redekop / png
in december 2005 in tehran, sufia entered this world with a tangle of hair, long eye lashes and two doting parents. ghahramani, who worked for unicef providing humanitarian aid in disaster zones, and abdollahi, an international tour guide, had a good life in iran.
they immigrated, though, when their daughter was three to canada, a country with a better human rights record and more opportunities for women. they moved into a one-bedroom apartment in coquitlam, but those first years were not easy.

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abdollahi’s tour guide job took him away for long stretches of time. ghahramani was essentially a single parent, who went back to school to become a massage therapist and later worked in a luxury vancouver hotel, riding transit from early in the morning to late in the evening as she juggled picking up and dropping off sufia from daycares and schools.
“life was difficult,” ghahramani recalled.
“it was a classic story of immigration,” abdollahi added.
but through it all, ghahramani said, the bond between mother and daughter grew tighter.
“we were doing everything together, we were attached to each other. we were talking about everything,” she said. “she was my whole life. and she was doing pretty good.”
family photos show a smiling sufia in halloween costumes, jumping at a trampoline park, eating poutine, playing tennis and the guitar, zip-lining, and becoming a canadian citizen in 2014.
her parents, who divorced but remain friends, began to worry about sufia in grade 8, in january 2020, when she used drugs for the first time and began to show signs of depression. they supported their daughter and eventually thought everything was okay.
in april 2021, though, sufia confessed to her parents she was taking prescription pills purchased on the street, including hydromorphone, an opioid that treats pain, and xanax, a benzodiazepine taken for anxiety. and she was extremely upset that her cellphone had been stolen by a teen boy who was posting her private photos on social media, ghahramani said.

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again, the parents thought they had worked through these issues with their daughter, who continued to go to school and participate in her extracurricular activities.
but when they discovered in november 2021 that she was taking drugs again, abdollahi said they “got serious,” reaching out to her family doctor, an iranian psychiatrist via skype, a psychologist in vancouver and a counsellor at her high school. the teen girl found some of these professionals helpful, but did not connect well with all of them, her parents said.
two months later, in january 2022, they put sufia in a 10-week residential treatment program in vancouver, but she left after one week because she wanted to come home. this is common, experts say, as it takes most people multiple attempts at treatment before completing a program.
her family doctor prescribed antidepressant medication, which improved sufia’s spirits most days. her desperate parents also resorted to giving her regular urine tests that, since january, were consistently negative for drugs.
ramin abdollahi (right) comforts roya ghahramani during an emotional interview about the overdose death of their daughter sufia abdollahi, 16. photo: arlen redekop
ramin abdollahi (right) comforts roya ghahramani during an emotional interview about the overdose death of their daughter sufia abdollahi, 16. photo: arlen redekop arlen redekop / png
but an emotional abdollahi said he realizes now that while his daughter appeared outwardly happy, she must have continued to be internally upset.
“i made two mistakes. the one mistake was i was too certain she passed the whole drug phase of her life, and she (was) going into a normal life,” he said. “the second mistake was i just thought that the whole depression thing was not that serious.”

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two months before her death, sufia took a medical survey which showed she had severe depression. but she had to wait to see a psychiatrist. that wait was, tragically, three days too long.
although sufia’s mother remained worried, a few weeks before the girl’s death she consented to stop using the urine tests. they were bothering the teen, who assured her parents she wasn’t doing drugs.
“she always told me, ‘roya, fentanyl is the end of it. if someone takes fentanyl, you die … i’m never taking that,'” ghahramani recalled.
on july 23, ghahramani woke up to find the salad her daughter had made. that saturday night was quiet in their apartment — sufia offered to give her tired mother a massage, apologized for causing trouble in their life, and went to bed around 11 p.m., looking forward to manicures and sushi the next day.
everything seemed normal. until it wasn’t.
after ghahramani found her daughter unresponsive in her room, a 911 operator insisted the terrified mother inject naloxone, which a friend had given her in case she ever needed it.
“my hands were shaking. i was crying,” she recalled.
she was also instructed to perform cpr until paramedics took over once the ambulance arrived. nothing revived the teen.

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“i said goodbye to her before those people can put her in the white bag. and i ran after her because it was the last time she was leaving home,” a weeping ghahramani said.
although the coroner’s report is not complete yet, medical officials have told sufia’s parents she died of a fentanyl overdose.
ghahramani and abdollahi knew their daughter’s aug. 8 funeral was the last ceremony they would hold for her. there would be no graduations, no wedding. so they spoke openly that day about her cause of death, hoping it might help others.
“we decided that if we want to do one thing for the community, it’s to tell everyone what was the reason that she died. not to hide it. so we made sure we said it to everyone. then they know that death and fentanyl is very close, (the drug) doesn’t understand decent families, educated families,” ghahramani said.
“and everyone was super grateful for that. and the amount of sympathy and love that i received during this time is priceless.”
abdollahi said teenagers can be reluctant to trust adults, and often won’t seek help in their schools, from medical professionals, or police.
“it’s now, more than ever, important to fill this gap because it’s now we are in a crisis, in a drug crisis.”
family photos in the home of sufia abdollahi, 16, who died of an overdose in july. photo: arlen redekop
family photos in the home of sufia abdollahi, 16, who died of an overdose in july. photo: arlen redekop arlen redekop / png

four years ago, charlesworth, the representative for children and youth, issued a report which called on the government to create and fund “a comprehensive system of substance use services capable of consistently meeting the diverse needs of all youth.”

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although the government has made “good strides” since then, this top recommendation remains “in progress,” she said, because new services aren’t keeping up with the dire need in the community. positive changes include more residential treatment centres for youth, but charlesworth said many teens will refuse to go into bed-based care.

the province, she argued, needs a more “robust array of services,” such as harm reduction, including safe supply, to help stabilize youth. her office hears about too many young people, she said, who survive overdoses with catastrophic brain injuries, are exposed to sexual assault and violence while using drugs, or are lured into the survival sex trade to pay for their addictions.
charlesworth doesn’t believe the health system’s toxic-drug-supply warnings effectively reach most young people, arguing they need messages they can relate to personally — perhaps delivered by people their age or by speakers at schools with lived experiences. without proper deterrents, youth may continue to feel dangerously invincible, she added.
“they don’t think that bad things are going to happen to them. that’s just the way their brains are wired,” charlesworth said. “that implicit assumption that they’re going to be just fine, they’ve got it all under control. that’s something that teenagers do.”

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but it can be a life-and-death miscalculation. if a young person uses drugs for the first time, with no built-up tolerance for fentanyl, that initial hit could be fatal. “given the toxicity, there’s no margin for error,” she said.
malcolmson, the mental health and addictions minister, said her government has promised to create 123 new youth substance use beds, and to open 13 more foundry centres, which offer integrated mental illness and addictions care for youth.

these new services are part of the ndp’s $500 million pathway to hope initiative, which is intended to create a “seamless and comprehensive system of mental health and substance use care” for adults and youth. safe supply , though, is only available to people over the age of 19.

students in public schools receive some limited information about the crisis. curriculum in k-10 “directly inform(s) students on the dangers of substance use, basic principles for emergency responses and harm reduction,” while in grades 11 and 12, school districts can use programs like iminds , created at the university of victoria, that discuss substance use, malcolmson’s ministry said.

the government has also recently launched free single-session mental health counselling, called here2talk , for post-secondary students.

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roya ghahramani cries as ramin abdollahi discusses the overdose death of their daughter sufia abdollahi, 16. photo: arlen redekop
roya ghahramani cries as ramin abdollahi discusses the overdose death of their daughter sufia abdollahi, 16. photo: arlen redekop arlen redekop / png
ghahramani and abdollahi believe, though, that telling sufia’s story may be one extra, crucial way to help teens through this crisis.
“if i tell them how much i’m suffering, how much i’m missing my daughter, and how many dreams we had that are not happening, and they see her pictures — it’s enough, the kids would remember,” said ghahramani, who has the note sufia left on her salad tattooed on her left arm.
“nothing will bring back sufia,” added the teen’s broken-hearted father. “this is now a crisis. it took away our only daughter and we should tackle it with whatever we have.”
lculbert@postmedia.com
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