In a few weeks, hordes of world’s media will descend on Vancouver, British Columbia for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The most intrepid journalists will grab a camera man and head down to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) to get their money-shot: a homeless person sleeping on a heating vent, or a drug user shooting-up in Blood-Alley. Then they will roll out the sad-but-true statistics to contrast the majesty of the snow-capped North Shore mountains with the human misery o

K2 The Savage Mountain Last week, an old climbing buddy, Eileen Bistrisky, invited me to a presentation by Canadian climber, Don Bowie. K2 – The Ascent of the Savage MountainI was both inspired and horrified as he described his successful ascent of K2 without the use of supplemental oxygen.. At 28,253ft above sea level, K2, located in Northern Pakistan is the world’s second highest peak. It is widely considered to be the hardest and most dangerous mountain on earth to climb.

Sam Brown Last week I watched a documentary, on CBC’s The Fifth Estate, on one Sam Brown, a thrill seeking, award-winning, mountain-biker from Nelson BC, who found the greatest thrill was hauling hockey bags full of pot across the border to the US. (http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2009-2010/over_the_edge/) Sam didn’t fancy himself a drug dealer and would be offended at the suggestion. In his mind, he was just having fun. The more dangerous the mission the better. He revelled in pushi

QuestForFire is my new blog. I am an addiction specialist and would like to share some thoughts with you…Life through the lens of neurobiology. My teachers are my patients. They are like snowflakes, no two are completely alike. I feel honoured to work with them and not a single day goes by that I don’t learn something new. I’m sure I learn more from them than they learn from me. Addiction refers to those experiences that are so engaging that once we taste them, we become so e