Arizona O’Neill| Longreads | May 19, 2026 | 961 words (10 minutes)

The dedication page for Arizona O’Neill’s Opioids & Organs reads: “To the parts of my father still out in the world.” O’Neill, a Montreal-based writer and artist, lost her father a decade ago to a fentanyl overdose. The two were estranged at the time; still, as next of kin, O’Neill was tasked with the choice of whether to donate his organs. “His death,” O’Neill told the Montreal Gazette, “was the most intimate we had ever been.”

The cover of Arizona O'Neill's Opioids & Organs
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Opioids & Organs scrutinizes a “silver lining” of an ongoing addiction crisis: a rise in organ donations. At his death, O’Neill’s father “was young, healthy, and well preserved,” she writes. “The perfect condition for organ harvesting.” It’s a dubious comfort for O’Neill. In Opioids & Organs, she gives remarkable vision and voice to her unease, detailing medical advancement’s historic relationship with exploitation and desecration. There is something fundamentally horrific, O’Neill observes, about trying to find the bright side of the opioid crisis: “We are still taking organs from groups of people society deems lesser.”

O’Neill’s work throughout Opioids & Organs is spirited and surreal. Her protagonist, Arizona, travels from Harvard University’s historic surgical theater to the Catacombs of Paris, excavating medical histories to try and resolve the complexities of her father’s death. She’s accompanied throughout by Izzy, her “obsessive personality lizard,” and Frankie, a sensitive literary icon with a paternal presence, each of whom appear in the excerpt below. The subject of her book is both disturbing and common, in need of illuminating perspective and complex consideration. In her debut graphic novel, O’Neill gives both, and generously. —Brendan Fitzgerald

This is an excerpt from Opioids & Organs by Arizona O’Neill, published by Drawn & Quarterly on May 19, 2026.

An exterior of a restaurant, followed by an interior image of a number of busy tables. Arizona's friends say she has been busy. Arizona tells her friends she is working on a research project concerning the history of organ donation.
Arizona's three friends share their respective status as organ donors, and ask her what she has learned in her research.
Arizona explains to one friend that she is researching the rise in "organ trade" in Canada as a result of the opioid crisis. The friend she addresses transforms into a detailed drawing of a human heart.
Arizona informs a second friend that, in 2017 and 2018, there was speculation that opioid-related deaths might put an end to a shortage in organ donations. The friend she addresses turns into a drawing of a human kidney.
Arizona tells her three friends about the ongoing rise in opioid-related deaths in Canada, concentrated among younger men. The third friend transforms into a drawing of a human eye. A small lizard on Arizona's shoulder urges her to let her friends do their own math.
Arizona explains to her friends that the COVID-19 pandemic isolated many opioid users from treatment and safety options. Her friends ask whether the rise in organ donations might be a silver lining.
Arizona challenges her friend's ideas about a silver lining. Instead, Arizona asks what incentive the Canadian government has for preventing opioid addiction and death when such an alleged silver lining exists?
The Eyeball friend asks if the group heard about efforts in Argentina to legalize the sale of organs for financial benefit. Arizona asks whether that might not be a bad idea, for such a transaction to be mutually beneficial so long as it is regulated and safe.
Arizona's friends express concern about such an approach to donations "blurring the line between organ trafficking and legal donations." Arizona responds that donors, or their grieving families, deserve compensation. The Kidney friend responds that the subject is "morbid."
Arizona points out that, when it comes to organ donations, "everyone in the supply chain makes money except the actual donor."
The table grows quiet. The Eye, Kidney, and Heart transform back into their human selves.
Outside the restaurant, Arizona's friends say goodnight to her. As she leaves, the friends refer to her as "a bit intense."
As she walks away, Arizona confides to the lizard on her shoulder that she had hoped to be distracted from her organs and opioids project, but "can't even help myself. It's all I think about." The lizard suggests she do even more research.
A figure appears on the sidewalk behind Arizona and steps closer to the reader.
The figure introduces himself as David Landsberg, British Columbia's former Provincial Director of Transplant Services. He refers to the rise in organ availability due to drug overdoses as "a mixed blessing," and says he is ambivalent about it.
Arizona, her lizard, and Frankenstein's monster walk through an urban park. Arizona argues that "no one in society should be sacrificed so that another group thrives." She tells her friends that she is trying to prove an imbalance between who gives organs and who benefits from their reception.
Arizona, the monster, and the lizard move through the park, where a surreal farmer's market now takes place. Rather than produce, the tables offer shoppers "Rare Blood Types" and "Wombs for Rent," along with paperwork-free adoptions and a selection of organs available under a sign that says "red market."

Copyright © 2026 by Arizona O’Neill. Published 2026 by Drawn & Quarterly. All rights reserved.

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Arizona O’Neill is a Montreal author and illustrator. She is the illustrator of Nelly Arcan’s L’enfant dans le miroir and Heather O’Neill’s Valentine in Montreal. Her comics have appeared in Hazlitt, Exclaim!, Canadian Geographic, and the Montreal Gazette. She has created animated videos for many outlets, including the CBC. A regular contributor to Radio-Canada’s Il restera toujours la culture, she is one half of the Bookstagram page @ONeillReads. Her graphic novel Opioids and Organs is available via Drawn & Quarterly.

Editor: Brendan Fitzgerald