Taylar Piazza has been on the front lines of the addictions and recovery scene in Sault Ste. Marie since 2015.
As co-chair of the Sault Ste. Marie & Area Drug Strategy — a committee that makes up 20 citywide agencies — she’s helping organize the upcoming Rockin’ Out For Recovery event at the Roberta Bondar Pavilion next Tuesday.
Celebrating community members who have overcome or are on their journey to overcoming addiction, Rockin’ Out for Recovery will invite attendees to gauge what services are available to them while they enjoy a barbecue, live music and guest speakers — all free of charge.
Piazza, who is also a supervisor at the Community Resource Centre with Social Services, said the event is a fantastic opportunity for like-minded individuals who are on their path to recovery to mingle.
“I can easily tell people how to get to treatment and how to start their recovery journey,” she told SooToday. “But there’s so much more weight behind someone who you’re sitting across the table with that may be in the same situation as you were in at some point in the past.”
A member of the Drug Strategy since 2017, Piazza and her committee meets monthly with their partners to determine what kind of programming they can offer to community members who rely on their services.
Then, they design and create unique treatment plans that they believe will work for each individual in need of help.
“We’re also keeping up to date on drug trends locally and within the Algoma District,” she said. “We connect with our partners through EMS to see what drugs are in the community, and we put out drug alerts and opiate alerts for overdoses.”
And the trends haven’t been ideal as of late.
As SooToday reported in July, data released by the Office of the Chief Coroner showed that Sault Ste. Marie had the highest opioid-related death rate in Ontario during the first three months of this year.
Thirteen opioid toxicity deaths were reported in the city between January and March of 2024, up from eight during the same three-month period last year.
“Some weeks, we’ll go with no overdoses at all, and sometimes we have three or four in one day,” Piazza said. “From a Drug Strategy perspective, we’re always hoping that people are just using safely. It’s unrealistic to think people will just stop using — but of course, that is the goal, and we always have treatment-focused conversations with people when we can.”
Another major headline in recent weeks came on Aug. 20 when Ontarians learned of the Ford government’s decision to ban new supervised consumption sites, which ended hopes for a Sault facility.
That wasn’t welcome news to the addictions and recovery agencies in town, according to Piazza.
“The whole role of the site is to make sure people aren’t dying and they’re using clean supplies,” she said. “The more services the better, and with one more now being offline, it isn’t great news. We want as many resources as we can get.”
Fortunately for her committee, Piazza noted the Sault is blessed to have the kinds of working partnerships that allow them to tackle hardline issues effectively — even when funding and other resources aren’t always available.
“We’re a pretty tight-knit crew of agencies and we work really well together,” she said. “We’re all so well-networked that it’s much easier to get things done because we work so well as a team. We have almost 20 agencies that sit as part of the Drug Strategy, so it’s clear that our community understands the value of this event and the committee itself.”
The 9th annual Rockin’ Out For Recovery will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 10 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Roberta Bondar Pavilion.