Big brother

A while back I was talking to somebody about the new DIP (drug intervention program) in Cardiff. He had just had his prescription taken over by the DIP after, I think, being caught offending but I might have got that wrong.

It was what he told me about how he picks up his methadone that I couldn't get my head around. He said there was a machine that scans your retina and then dispenses the methadone to you. I thought this geezer had lost it - that he'd been watching too much Star trek or something!! So I politely nodded and made the right noises and didn't believe a word of it!

But, weeks later it was still on my mind. The thing was I couldn't bring myself to ask anyone about this for thinking I'd make a right tit out of myself! But I finally decided to find out once and for all and it was true. When you first go there it's all set up and the machine takes an image of your retina which is recorded, so then everyday when you want your juice all you have to do is go in, stick your head in the right place and out comes your meth - bish, bash, bosh, simple as that... right?

Well no, it's not right - retina scanning???? Bollocks to that!! What better way to implement totalitarian measures than on an already vulnerable element of our society. Let's face it, the DIP gets it's clients from people made to go there after they've been drug tested by courts. They've got to go otherwise they go to jail, then they're made to have their retina scanned and recorded to be able to pick up their methadone. 

The other way to get in the DIP is to refer yourself. But you might ask why would people refer themselves to something like that? Because they can get a script within 2-3 weeks rather than waiting 1-2 years going the NHS Community Addiction route. Most people think the only treatment for heroin addiction is methadone, that's what is banded about by so-called professionals. So, desperate to get off the gear they turn to the green saviour, methadone, thinking it'll make everything better well unfortunately that's not the case. If addiction was that simple we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today. 

The next thing we know they'll be putting microchips in those seeking treatment for addiction. When is all the bullshit going to stop? How can the waiting list be so long at the Community Addiction Unit (where, incidentally, there's no retina scanning or finger printing) and so very short at the DIP where they employ such big brother tactics as this??

If they really wanted to help addicts and help communities then put some decent money into the kind of services that are going to do that, not just napalm people with methadone and record their retina scans so they can be kept track of in the future.

To pinch a quote from Stuart Honor - "Poverty isn't soluble in methadone hydrochloride"

Heroin drought in the South West

Apparently the police are doing well in their fight against heroin trafficking to the UK as there has been a severe shortage of heroin across the Midlands, into Mersey side and especially in Bristol, Cardiff and Newport.

Drug users are reporting heroin has been increasingly harder to come by over the last few weeks and the little that is about, is of a poor quality. This has got me thinking, how does this affect the heroin user? Some I know have actually stopped using, preferring to sit out the drought and wait for something better to come along. But from my past experience the usual response is one of desperation; frantic phone calls and a search to rival that of the 'great escape' to find something of some kind of quality. If that fails, people will buy whatever they can get their hands on to see them through. 

This can be dangerous, more so to the IV heroin user, as the only gear they can get their hands on is very weak, containing a very high percentage of adulterants and can cause even more damage to veins, liver etc than the heroin they're used to using plus of course they need to use more of it due to it's weak nature.

More worrying though is what happens when stronger gear finally makes it way through to street level. How a drought normally works is that there is a lot of rubbish gear around for a month or so, interspersed with gear of a better quality but only available in small amounts for a very limited time. So, everyone's tolerance drops during this time (quite severely in a lot of cases) and they're also injecting more gear in every hit. Then as quick as it has come, it's gone, and everything goes back to 'normal'.

It's obvious what can happen during this time - lots of overdoses. People aren't prepared for the stronger heroin and by the time you find out it can be too late. Two types of heroin can be exactly the same in colour and consistency etc but be very different in strength. Nobody believes a dealer when they tell you their gear is top quality and to take it easy - because they always say that, even if their gear is shite!

So I'd like to ask people to be careful and warn others to be careful too - the drought won't last forever so if you're going to use IV heroin then ask questions of fellow addicts about the gear your buying and if there is any doubt just push a little in, wait for it to hit you, settle into it, find out how strong it is before you put the whole hit in. If it is strong you can always keep it in the pin until a bit later.

To reach recovery you need to stay alive long enough for everything to click into place - use safely!

Knife culture

Yesterday evening I was riding through the centre of Cardiff at 7pm when I saw 4 youths running after another teenager who was riding a bike. At first I thought they were all messing about, but then when one of the boys caught up with the lad on the bike, I saw him hit him a couple of times, the lad fell to the ground and it was then I realised he'd been stabbed twice. Blood was spurting out of his arm as the 4 boys ran off.

He then walked over to me, asking me to help him. My first instinct was to get as far away from him as I could, there was blood everywhere and I didn't want to risk the possibility of getting infected with anything. But I knew he was loosing a lot of blood and panicking and he didn't know what to do about it. I told him to place his hand over the wound that was bleeding a lot, while I phoned an ambulance. 

The blood was still coming out very fast between his fingers so I used a t-shirt as a makeshift bandage/tourniquet, and put that over the wound. That had sorted the bleeding out,slowing it right down. Meanwhile the lad was really panicking so I sat him down, asked him his name and tried to calm him down a bit. There was a crowd around by then and the police had just turned up, also a doctor driving by had stopped and come over to help. I was still reassuring the lad, Daniel that he was going to be alright but that he was going to have to go to hospital to get stitches. Really I thought he was going to need an operation to fix whatever had been cut, I think it was a major vein and not an artery as his arm was still getting a good blood supply. 

Daniel asked me to phone his parents and let them know what was happening, I tried to get away with just telling his dad that he'd been hurt and was going to hospital. But his father was having none of this and prised out of me that he'd been stabbed. I could here his mother crying in the background, which only made the whole experience even harder. I never want to make another telephone call like that, ever again. It was horrific.

I'd noticed another wound to his chest, just below his nipple. It looked exactly the same as the other wound so I knew it was deep, but it wasn't bleeding, so I took no more notice of it. My concern was to stop the bleeding in the other wound. Amazingly I was quite calm throughout all of this, I knew what had to be done and once I'd made the decision to help him, in spite of knowing I'd be covered with his blood, I simply got on with it. 

When the ambulance left with Daniel, I looked down at myself; I was drenched in his blood. That was when the severity of the situation hit me, I think I was in a bit of shock myself. I knew he was lucky that there wasn't anymore damage done.

I telephoned his parents today to see how Daniel was doing. He's still in hospital but doing fine and likely to go home tomorrow. The wound on his chest turned out to have been lucky not to have killed him - 2inches deep and directly over his heart, apparently half an inch further and it would have punctured his heart. It's baffled the doctors too, as it wasn't bleeding at all! The wound on his arm was 3 inches deep and needed a good amount of stitches, inside and out, to fix.

It turns out that Daniel knew his attacker's,  it was a disagreement from junior school that started all of this. What I can't comprehend is why a teenage boy would throw away 3-5 years of his life in an unprovoked attack - he ran up behind Daniel and stabbed him twice. What a waste of his life and his talents. I hope this doesn't start a never ending cycle of prison sentences for that young boy, and that he's able to make something of his life.

I'm just glad that I was there and able to help Daniel, it was definitely the right thing to have done.

Another day in recovery...

I was on the train earlier, travelling back from meeting up with one of our volunteers, and it was absolutely lashing it down! It got me thinking about rain and how it makes me feel!

Watching and listening to the rain has always had a theraputic effect on me. It does a number of things for me - It helps me to take stock of my life, short and longer term; It helps me to feel more positively about what's going on in my life at the time; But most of all it's a time when I can ground myself again - to get back in touch with the real me! I find it a lot easier to think when I'm sat watching the rain fall.

When it's raining I like to sit in my outhouse, drink tea, smoke and contemplate life, it works for me!

Celebrity's drug rehabilitation

Earlier tonight on the 'Living' channel, I was watching a program about celebrity's and rehabs, the successes and the failures and all the hype that goes along with it. It pisses me off when I think about celeb's with loads of money, taking shed loads of drugs, because that's what celeb's are supposed to do, aren't they? It feels to me like they're making a shambles and a joke out of real addiction and real people with real problems.

When everything starts to get too much, up comes the manager to pay for a top class, 5 star rehab for them. The cynic in me says more often than not, it's for the publicity, the old adage- any publicity, even bad publicity, is good publicity! We can all think of at least a couple of celeb's that would fit into that bracket. 

The example they're setting to the thousands of youngsters that look up to them is a very dangerous one - 'yes, you can use and abuse drugs and drink and when you've had enough, just go to rehab'. Well I'm afraid it's not like that in the real world. What really pisses me off is that these are the stories of rehab's that make it into the media, and they're the stories that help to lead public opinion on them. In my world, the odds of getting into a rehab at the time that it could actually help, is about the same as having a white Christmas!

Well, I feel a lot better for getting that off my chest!

"Parasite told of drug cost"

'Each class A drug addict costs society over three quarters of a million pounds, a judge reminded one heroin user.

Judge Stephen QC said some would describe people like Ashley Blower, 31, of Maesteg, as parasites.

"You don't work, you steal from other people, spending your benefits on drugs and obtaining additional money you need from wholesale shoplifting," he told him.

"People may be interested to know that the Ministry of Justice published figures recently indicating how much it costs society to look after a class A addict and the cost was £800,000 for each one."

Blower had been cleared by a jury of possessing heroin with intent but convicted of possession. He was sentanced to 18 months' supervision with attendance on a substance abuse program and an enhanced thinking course. He spent 259 days in custody awaiting trial, during which time he said he has been drug free.'

This story was printed in Monday July 7th edition of The South Wales Echo. I decided to highlight it here to see what other people thought of it.

The 'Recovery Movement'

I decided to get involved with the “Recovery Movement’ as I feel the substance misuse field really needs rejuvenating. There is a lot about the field that is good but I’m afraid there is more that is both negative and non-productive. If we all speak up about this, that is addicts, recovered addicts, and all those working in the field, and say what we think about treatment services, the good, the bad and the ugly, then just maybe the policy makers will start listening and actually develop a new, recovery based treatment service that will help more people into sustained recovery from their addictions.

Those with addiction problems should be shown all the treatment/recovery options when they present asking for help, including – abstinence based, maintenance based, counselling, CBT etc, with an explanation of what all of the options entail.

The concept of a ‘Recovery Movement’ is very simple – the joining together of like-minded, ambitious people who are willing to do what they can to adapt the treatment system so it will help more people into sustained recovery. My aim is to highlight the areas, both good and bad, that need looking at with a view to improving them, so that we can maximise the good that this field does for those with substance misuse issues and also remove some of the barriers that are in the way for those seeking to change their behaviour.

There are lots of people and services around the UK that are pushing the recovery agenda on their own, cut off from others who are trying to do the same. By bringing all of these people together, we will make a stronger, louder voice, a voice that will reach Westminster with so much energy, it will demand a response!

Well, they're my thought's on the 'Recovery Movement', to see what the Prof has to say please visit 'The Prof speaks out'.