Ottawa • Est. 2024 • Lived Experience
A working roofer writing honestly about addiction, sobriety,
and building something solid — one day at a time.
I got clean, kept roofing, and started writing about what the system actually looks like from inside it — recovery pathways, policy gaps, and the stuff nobody talks about in Ontario.
"A solid roof is shelter. A solid recovery is the same thing — built piece by piece, nail by nail, day by day."— Josh Pearsall, Ottawa
A raw, section-by-section breakdown of the new Compassionate Intervention Act — how the system is supposed to work on paper versus where it's likely to break in real life.
A section-by-section walkthrough — what it's designed to do, how the system actually flows, and the pressure points where it could go wrong in practice.
Read Part 1 →Who qualifies for intervention, how "harm" gets defined, and why the real line is drawn by the people reading each application — not by the law.
Read Part 2 →The Drugs Got More Toxic, the Environment Got Harsher, and the Policy Response Got Softer
A frontline account of how Ottawa's opioid crisis became a poly-substance system current frameworks aren't built for.
The Harm Threshold — CIA Part 2
Who qualifies for intervention, how "harm" gets defined, and why the real line is drawn by the people reading each application.
Breaking Down the Compassionate Intervention Act — Part 1
A section-by-section walkthrough — what it's designed to do, how the system actually flows, and where it could break.
Ontario's $3.8B Problem — Who Profits When You Don't Recover?
Here's where the money actually went — and who gets paid when you stay sick.
When Poly-Dope Withdrawal Breaks Informed Consent
What happens when safer supply meets a drug it wasn't built for.
Housing First in Ottawa: Why Just Giving Keys Isn't Enough
Why keys alone don't fix it — and what a real continuum looks like.
Life With a Record in Canada
How a criminal record locks the cycle in, and what perspective actually means after prison.
The Parole Rebellion Protocol
Day 1 on parole my brain screamed "I could disappear right now." Here's the exact 5-step protocol I used.
The Lifelong Contract
The same financial logic that created this epidemic is now running the treatment.