Every time Kristen Bolt uses fentanyl, the possibility of an overdose is in the back of her head.

It’s happened three times before. On two of those occasions, she says, she had to be resuscitated.

But despite those close calls, the Guelph teen says she has no plans to stop taking opiates – because it still leaves her feeling better than the alternative.

She has a system, she says. First, she takes only a small amount of the drug. If the high she gets from that doesn’t seem unusually high, she’ll deduce that it’s safe to take more.

She also keeps a nasal spray containing naloxone with her, just in case “worse comes to worse” and somebody has to intervene to save her life.

Bolt says she’s been using needles for about two years. In that time, she’s noticed that fentanyl is becoming a bigger and louder presence, taking the place of heroin and other opiates.

“In the last six months, it seems to be everywhere,” she says.

 “Most of the times that I would be trying to get heroin, it ends up being fentanyl.”

Police say they’re seeing a similar trend, although having to wait several months to get test results on drugs suspected of being fentanyl makes it difficult to provide exact numbers.

In general, Guelph Police responded to about twice as many fentanyl-related incidents in 2016 as they did in 2015.

“Anecdotally, we know that we are seeing fentanyl in our community,” says Const. Buzz Dean.

Bolt, 19, says her addiction leaves her looking for an opiate, any opiate. If she’s expecting heroin and ends up with fentanyl, she’ll still take it – because she knows she’ll still get the high.

 “I find that some of the fentanyl’s not super potent, but then there is some fentanyl out there that is a lot stronger,” she says.

 “You don’t really know – you’re kind of playing Russian roulette with it.”

While Bolt knows taking the drug is dangerous, what really scares her is what happens when she’s off of opiates.

She says being in that state can leave her with stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhea and discomfort – which eventually becomes a pain that has brought her to the point of tears.

 “You just want to curl up in a ball and die,” she says.

“You’re desperate to find anything that’s going to make you feel even the slightest bit better.”

Injecting herself with opiates, she says, brings almost an instant relief to the pain – and the knowledge that if she doesn’t do it again, she’ll be back in the same place a few hours later.

“It’s consuming, and it just takes over you,” she says.

What does give Bolt pause is thinking back to when she started using needles. She was 17, she says, and her mother disappeared on her out of the blue.

After about two weeks, her mother contacted her – saying that she had moved away, and couldn’t bring her along because she was seeing a man whose bail conditions included staying away from children.

Bolt says that led to her dropping out of school and moving to downtown Guelph, where she ended up in the drug scene.

Before long, she says, her perception of drug abuse had shifted from thinking it was “bizarre” to accepting it as a normal part of other peoples’ lives – and, in time, of her own.

 “You get to a point where you’re like ‘I can’t stop, because if I could I would have already,” she says.

Without a job or a high school education, Bolt says, she’s not sure she can see a way for her to get past her addiction.

 “At this point, I can’t picture myself being happy without the drugs,” she says.

 “Hopefully … I don’t have to live like this until I die.”

In 2015, more than 700 deaths in Ontario were blamed on opioids. Nearly 30 per cent of them involved fentanyl.

With reporting by Allison Tanner