You Talk, We Die (Judy Ryan, Scribe)

Safe injecting rooms have been a polarising issue in Victoria for decades. Years of debate, government inquiries, coroner’s reports, media conjecture and scare campaigns have plagued any productive conversation. But in 2018, a room was finally opened in the inner-city Melbourne suburb of Richmond—largely thanks to community efforts led by Judy Ryan. You Talk, We Die is Ryan’s impassioned and unfiltered retelling of how she mobilised the community and people of influence—medical experts, politicians, journalists—to finally recognise drug use in Richmond as a health issue and not a criminal one. For residents and visitors, seeing the scourge of heroin dependence on the streets was ‘stressful and exhausting, and the disruption … very real and constant’. Locals would remove water taps from gardens, guard school children from seeing drug users in alleyways, and regularly phone emergency services upon finding people slumped in their cars. However, Ryan remained tireless in her campaign for a safe injecting room, including running for state parliament and building the Residents for Victoria Street Drug Solutions (RVSDS) community group, before finally seeing the Victorian government take action. Since that time, the room has saved countless lives, helped free up many ambulances, reduced discarded syringes in the area and connected people to important health services. You Talk, We Die is a frank and moving account of how the grassroots campaigning of compassionate residents led to a necessary intervention in a public health crisis so often misunderstood.

Nathan Smith is a freelance writer. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews