Contributor

Carlyn Zwarenstein is a Toronto-based writer. On Opium: Pain, Pleasure, and Other Matters of Substance was published in print in Canada by Goose Lane Editions (2021) and as an audiobook worldwide by ECW Press (2022). On Opium looks at the toxic drug crisis; chronic pain; opioids; capitalism & solidarity; loneliness & loss; dependence; drug user activism; and what we all need to be well. Opium Eater: The New Confessions (2016) is a shorter memoir about pain and opioid painkillers. It was a Globe & Mail Best Book of 2016 and has been taught on various undergraduate and graduate courses since 2017. Carlyn currently writes Live More Lives, a newsletter about fiction and experience; freelances features, essays and opinion articles about drug policy, environment, literature, and social issues; and is working on her first books without “opium” in the title. She studied biology and political science at the University of Toronto, graduating in 2001.