This article examines how women and non‑binary people who use opioids in Poland enact affective and embodied forms of resistance within environments shaped by criminalization, medicalization, and stigmatization. Drawing on a three‑year ethnographic study and 29 interviews, I analyze institutional encounters with police, emergency medical responders, and hospital staff that reveal the chronic, structural violence experienced by people who use drugs. Building on Lauren Berlant’s concepts of slow death and lateral agency, I propose the notion of “ephemeral pride” to capture fleeting, context‑dependent assertions of dignity, expertise, and self‑worth that arise within moments of heightened vulnerability. These affective expressions—such as challenging medical authority, refusing humiliating treatment, or rejecting police violence—do not produce structural change but interrupt the grinding logic of attrition. They illuminate how gender, class, health, and semi‑peripherality shape both the experience of slow death and the possibilities for agency.