Nicotine free!!

Well I'm into my second day 'nicotine free' and it's a lot easier than I expected, I'm glad to say! Stopping smoking has been on my mind for some time now and the crunch point came on Sunday evening when my stockpiled tobacco had run out and I needed to buy more. Yes that's right, my decision had nothing to do with the health implications of smoking but rather the dent in my wallet.

I whacked a patch on halfway through yesterday, courtesy of my GP ( but which had sat in my kitchen drawer for over 6 months!) It made me feel a little dizzy at first but then it did it's job just fine. I might be talking a little too soon but I've not experienced any major cravings so far! Last night was the only time I found hard. I'd just had dinner and was relaxing on the sofa when the craving came, but, thankfully it didn't last long and wasn't too much to handle.

I'd always thought I could give up the fags if I'd wanted to and I'm starting to feel that I was right in thinking that! The thing is, I've never wanted to before, so I've never tried! There's been a bit of a discussion progressing on the comment board of one of the films on our You Tube channel - Wired In Recovery, on whether nicotine or heroin is harder to get off! Check it out.

At this early stage, I'd say that heroin was a lot tougher to kick!

Heroin addicted elephant is out of rehab

The bull elephant, named Xiguang or Big Brother, has finally finished his 3 year detox program, based on a tropical Island.

He had been force-fed heroin laced bananas by his captors, who were illegal traders based in China, so they would be able to control him. When these captors were arrested in 2005, Big Brother went into 'care' but initial attempts to detox him proved too dangerous as 'even iron chains could not contain him', the Chiana daily newspaper reported.

After this first, failed attempt he was transported to Hainan to start his medicated detox. Here he was given methadone injections at a dosage of 5 times the usual human dose. After a year the frequency of these injections was gradually reduced, at a very slow rate to minimise his discomfort. He was also treated to bathing and massage treatments as part of his detox program. 

Since finishing his program he has been relocated to a new home in the mainland city of Kunming, the capital city of his home province, Yunnan.  

I read this story in the Cardiff Metro newspaper on 5/09/08 and at first it seemed very sad, upseting me greatly. An elephant that couldn't have fully realised what was going on, was put through the hell of living with addiction and withdrawal. On thinking about it further though, it then occured to me that during his detox this elephant had received better treatment than most of the people I know who struggle with substance misuse problems - A holistic detox program which included substitute prescribing in a reduction plan, with massage and hot baths to boot, and to top it off, an aftercare program which included re-housing!

If only the treatment services for human beings were so caring and thorough in the delivery of their service. 

August weather

Well what a terrible summer we've had! I was travelling home from work a week or so ago when it was absolutely tipping it down. I noticed that as we were sitting in traffic and the rain had built up on the windscreen creating what I thought was an interesting effect. So I whiped my camera out and grabbed a photo.

I first got into photography about 15 years ago but haven't really taken any photo's for the past 10 years. I've recently purchased a new camera and I'm really enjoying taking pictures again!

Outside the law?

I read with interest an newspaper article from around a month ago which highlighted the arrest of Hans and Eve Rausing for drugs offences after she was caught trying to smuggle heroin and crack into a function at the American embassy in London. When police searched the couples home in an exclusive part of Chelsea, they found more crack and heroin and nearly £2000 worth of cocaine. Hans is a heir to the multi-billion pound Tetra Pak drinks carton empire and Eve is the daughter of a Pepsi-Cola executive.

But none of this so far is very unusual, well ok, getting caught with class A drugs whilst trying to get into a party at the American Embassy has never happened to me but it's what I read next that bothered me. At a hearing at Westminster Magistrates it was announced that all charges are to be dropped. Yes, dropped! They are to receive conditional cautions. Exactly what this means I'm not sure but it's probable that they will have to attend some kind drug misuse programmes.

Why, just because they're well known socialites, should they be treated any differently? How can the Crown Prosecution Service justify treating this case differently to any other drug possession case? 

What gets me the most about this isn't the fact that they've been 'let off' but that this course of action isn't normally used. Surely it's better to offer the opportunity of good treatment options to those with substance misuse issues? We all know that throwing people in jail doesn't 'cure' addiction! It's obvious from this that when it's one of the middle/upper classes own that's been caught with drugs and admitted they have an addiction; they're treated a lot differently to the working class addict.

If this course of action is the right one for this kind of case why isn't it the course of action taken that is normally taken?

Addiction shouldn't be treated as a criminal issue. It's a health and social issue and therefore the answers to it will come from the health and social field.

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.