Addiction rehabilitation centre CRD Foster is Quebec's only public inpatient rehab facility offering English services, but in August it is losing its only doctor.
The centre, located in Saint-Philippe, just south of Montreal, used to have a doctor on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
But now the doctor only comes in once a week, and will stop working there altogether in August.
Fady Zigby is an educator at the centre and said it has already had to turn away some people with serious addiction problems because of the situation.
He explained there are nurses at the facility, but they are limited in what they can do and now can't call the doctor in case of an emergency.
He said that if the local health authority, the CISSS Montérégie-Ouest, fails to find a doctor in time, the consequences for patients could be severe.
"If they say: 'I'll try on my own. I'm going to try to have detox at my own home,' and they try to go cold-turkey, they can risk death," Zigby said.
A spokesperson from APTS, the union that represents clinical staff at the facility, said the search for a new doctor began awhile ago, but has so far come up empty.
"So we're fearing a lot that, by the end of August, nobody's going to show up," Francis Collin said.
A spokesperson for the health authority said the situation is concerning, but they are working to ensure no one is abandoned.
"All the affected departments are mobilized to find solutions and several steps are underway to find a doctor who will take care of the clientele of the Saint-Philippe facility," Jade St-Jean said in an email to CBC.