After overcoming his own addiction, Matthew Bonn is trying to make it easier for others to do the same

After overcoming his own addiction, Matthew Bonn is trying to make it easier for others to do the same.

"I didn't wake up one morning and start using fentanyl," he says. "I've never met somebody that while they were growing up, they said I'm going to be a full-blown substance user by the age of 21, 22."

But Bonn tells NEWS 95.7's The Todd Veinotte show he had a 'gateway lifestyle,' that started when was a teenager.

"For me it started as an escape, I never really felt comfortable in my own skin," he says.

After a years-long addiction, Bonn finally sought help in 2018.

"I was in and out of jails, detoxes and treatment centres," he says. "I'd overdosed multiple times, and I just realized that it was time to try something new. I wanted to save my life."

Thanks to places like Mainline Needle Exchange, Direction 180, and helpful doctors, Bonn says he is now only on a low dose of methadone.

"There were a lot of people at these organizations that had lived experiences with the same kind of battles I was facing, and they gave me hope that there was a new way of life," he says.

Bonn co-founded the group HaliFIX to advocate for an overdose prevention site in Halifax, which would be the first of it's kind in Atlantic Canada.

"I went full tilt and started helping people that were in the exact same spot where I was," Bonn says.

An overdose prevention site -- sometimes called a safe injection site -- is a place where substance users can inject, smoke, or ingest their drug of choice under close medical supervision.

"Halifax just wants something small," Bonn says. "Four booths, maybe six hours a day with extended hours on cheque week or if there's any kind of bad batch alert going around."

He says the site would cost about $20, 000 each month, far less than the cost of health care for those who overdose on substances, or who receive bloodborne illnesses and infections as a result of dirty needles.

"Say if we save 10 people from having Hepatitis C, that's close to a million dollars that we're saving the provincial government," Bonn says. "So not only is it going to save lives, but it's going to save money."

Bonn hopes naysayers will look at the research before saying no to the site.

"It actually reduces drug-related crime, and it increases referrals to health and social programs such as detox and housing support," he says.

Although HaliFIX has received no official commitment from the government, they have received support from the mayor, councillors, and local MLAs.

Bonn is hopeful that the city will embrace an overdose prevention site in the future.

"People who are using substances, they don't want to die," he says. " We need this lifesaving service in Halifax, and we're ready now."