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The first two times that Jay overdosed on fentanyl, his horrified parents found him slumped and turning blue in a chair in his bedroom. They called an ambulance to their suburban home in the northwest and accompanied him to hospital.

The third time, they weren’t shocked anymore, he says. They were just sad. They called for an ambulance and went to bed.

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Since then, Jay has overdosed seven more times in five years, including twice on CTrains, where strangers called for help as his breathing slowed precipitously.

Each time EMS arrived to deliver a life-saving dose of naloxone, Jay would come to, “police and paramedics climbing all around,” confused about what was happening.

“The ones in my house were the worst — the ones where my parents found me,” Jay says. “They weren’t necessarily my worst overdoses, but because it was them, they were the worst. Of anyone that could have found me, it had to be my parents.”

But that hasn’t stopped him from using nearly every day.

“It’s like a little hell on earth that I cannot seem to escape.”

Photo by Darren Makowichuk / Postmedia

A map depicting all of the opioid-related calls EMS responded to last year paints a picture of a crisis that is unfolding as much in the suburbs as it is downtown.

In the last quarterly report on the crisis, the province reported that the majority of people who overdosed on fentanyl or opioids in Calgary, around 81 per cent, come from neighbourhoods outside the downtown.