His 18-year-old son Daniel, who struggled with depression and anxiety, died from an accidental overdose of the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin last year.
In the face of stigma and shame associated with addictions, the prominent Toronto doctor is making his family's story public in hopes it will help see new provincial plans aimed at combatting narcotic abuse through to fruition.
Glazier sat in the public gallery at Queen's Park on Wednesday as Health Minister Deb Matthews introduced new legislation to create a registry to track the prescribing of narcotics and controlled substances in Ontario.
"What Dr. Glazier has experienced first-hand is happening to families province-wide. The facts are staggering," Matthews said, noting that since 2004 the number of oxycodone-related deaths in the province has nearly doubled, as have narcotic-abuse related admissions to treatment and addiction services
Daniel was 14 when Glazier and his wife learned the teen was struggling with mental health problems and taking drugs like marijuana and ecstasy to self-medicate. Within a year, the teen's drug use became more indiscriminate and he was taking anything he could in an effort to feel normal.
Glazier's medical credentials are many, but even he couldn't find local treatment resources for his son. The doctor is a senior scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, core scientist at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health at St. Michael's Hospital, a family physician and a professor of family medicine at the University of Toronto.
Because of a severe shortage of treatment beds for young people struggling with both mental health problems and addictions, Glazier sent Daniel to a residential treatment facility in Utah. The teen stayed there for two years, finally returning home clean in 2008. He enrolled in George Brown College and appeared to have turned over a new leaf.
But on July 24, 2009, about a year after Daniel's return, Glazier and his wife were eating lunch at a roadside chip wagon during a drip up north to Algonquin Park when his pager went off. It was the police, calling to say Daniel had been found unresponsive that morning at the Toronto youth residential facility where he had been staying.
It was later learned Daniel had relapsed two weeks earlier and was buying OxyContin and Percocet off the streets. Toxicology tests found he had died from oxycodone toxicity. He had seen his psychiatrist and therapist the day before and showed no signs of being suicidal.
Like many addicts, Daniel hid his symptoms well. And like many young people, he felt invulnerable to the dangers of drugs.
"You couldn't have any idea of how much guilt and how much angst has been involved," Glazier said, his voice choking with emotion.
In the time since Daniel's death, Glazier heard that a panel of experts had been commissioned by the province to make recommendations on a narcotics strategy. He got in touch and asked if he could help. He was in turn asked if he'd be willing to have Daniel's story made public to raise awareness of the issue.
He sat down with his wife and two daughters and they made a decision collectively: "The main purpose (of the strategy) is to prevent these kinds of deaths and this kind of suffering and we felt we had to do what we could to support it, even if it meant being in an emotional and difficult place."
The legislation, if implemented, would lead to the creation of a registry that would issue an alert when someone tries to get the same drugs from different doctors or fills multiple prescriptions at different pharmacies. It would also identify doctors and pharmacists who are prescribing or dispensing too many drugs, ultimately making fewer drugs available on the streets.
The new narcotics strategy is also aimed at educating the health-care sector about appropriate prescribing and dispensing, and there are plans to increase addiction treatment resources.
Glazier's insights into the issue are also informed by his work. Addicts often walk into his Sherbourne St. practice asking for painkillers. He and his colleagues have a policy of not prescribing such drugs during a patient's first visit to discourage the practice of doctor-shopping.
Some say the province's strategy is long overdue. Ontario has the highest rate of narcotics use in Canada, but five other provinces have done more to monitor usage. As well, 41 American states have already enacted legislation to monitor prescription drugs.
Back in 2000, Richmond Hill mother Penny Long lobbied the province to create such a monitoring registry a year after her daughter died of an accidental overdose. Karly, 29, had bipolar disorder and in the week before she died went to emergency departments, walk-in clinics and doctors' offices and managed to obtain hundreds of drugs, including painkillers.
"She was double-doctoring and stockpiling because she was terrified she would run out. She was addicted and no one was helping her . . . ," Long said.
Long said she is pleased the province is finally creating a registry, but wonders how many lives could have been saved had it been done earlier.
"It's a wonderful step forward, but why did it have to take 10 years?"
