Mutual Survival: On Community, Grief, and Resistance (with special guest Garth Mullins) LIVE at the Book Warehouse

This week on a very special episode of Friendless, your pal and host of the show James Avramenko sits down with journalist, activist, podcaster, and author Garth Mullins — live at Book Warehouse on Main Street in Vancouver — for one of the most honest, wide-ranging conversations the show has ever had.

Garth is the host of the Crackdown podcast and the author of Crackdown: Surviving and Resisting the War on Drugs (Penguin Random House), a memoir-meets-manifesto that traces his life as a drug user, activist, and community organiser through the ongoing overdose crisis. His book is one of those rare things: deeply personal and rigorously political at the same time.

In this episode, they talk about shame — what it costs to carry it, and what it feels like when it finally lifts. They talk about grief as something we were always meant to share communally, and what it means to lose half your community to a crisis the government had the tools to prevent. They talk about necropolitics — the idea that governments don't just neglect people, they make calculated decisions about who will live and who will die. And they talk about what it actually looks like to build community in the middle of all of it: the meetings, the minutes, the coffee runs, the naloxone.

Garth is one of the clearest, most generous thinkers James has had on the show — and this conversation is proof of why.

📖 Pick up Crackdown wherever books are sold, and learn more about Garth on his website

🎙️ Find Garth's podcast at crackdownpod.com

❤️ Get your free Naloxone kit and training at towardtheheart.com 

🫂 Support or Learn about the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) on their website

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