Let's Talk - Community Outreach Services

HARM REDUCTION: HELPING ADDICTS FEEL HUMAN

In a drug-user context harm reduction can be explained by this
definition, one of many to be found; "It is any program or policy
designed to reduce drug-related harm without requiring the cessation
of drug use."

Further to this, and found on a web page out of the UK, another
author states that "it does not focus on abstinence: although harm
reduction supports those who seek to moderate or reduce their drug
use, it neither excludes nor presumes a treatment goal of abstinence.

Harm reduction approaches recognize that short-term abstinence
oriented treatments have low success rates, and, for opiate users,
high post-treatment overdose rates.

In my own words, I see the practice more as a philosophy and far less
a science.

I recently attended a harm reduction conference in Lethbridge. I was
already quite familiar with the term, and some of the practices, of
harm reduction. Or at least I thought I was. I wanted to take to the
conference my own notion of harm reduction and have that honed to
current beliefs and philosophies regarding the practice by the
experts themselves.

As it turned out, I came away from the conference wiser than I was
upon arriving, but, at the same time, knowing less about harm
reduction than I had anticipated. To imply I am wiser about knowing
less is, at a glance, a paradoxical statement, but true nonetheless.

From the information presented I was able to drop some serious
misconceptions that I had harboured for some time. In a sense, this
was like carrying something heavy unnecessarily. I came away with a
lightness of being and a clearer mind-set as a result of the conference.

The fact of the matter is this; little is known about harm reduction
and research is scarce. I didn't really know this before attending
and I was disappointed in realizing that I would come away from the
conference with fewer answers than anticipated.

We love to measure and label practices and not being able to do so
with harm reduction, we fail to see the value in enacting such a
practice. In time, we will.

The most current example of harm reduction practices are safe
injection sites like the one in the East Hastings neighbourhood of
Vancouver. The goal there, in one respect, is to reduce the spread of
HIV by providing clean needles and a safe environment for drug users
to inject. But, as of today, the evidence of it working is still unclear.

Statistics take time to tell a story. But there is a whole other
avenue to explore with such a practice and that is the sociological
one. It tends to be ignored because it can't be counted.

One may clap their hands upon finding out that one person avoided
infection by using the safe site but something far more significant
might have occurred. (Anyone talk to him lately? No, we'll just wait
for the stats to tell the story.)When that drug-user came in to use
safely, the safe site not only gave him a clean needle, but it
allowed him to feel like a person again - that he wasn't evil, that
he wasn't just a drug-addicted scum of a criminal. The safe site
opened the door for him to come in from the cold, to be accepted
without judgement.

You must bear in mind how marginalized this segment of our society
has become. They are on the outside of everything. Failures. Not only
in their own minds, but in the minds of their community as well.
Awarding the respect and dignity the drug-user deserves as a person
might be the key to the success of the harm reduction approach.

The safe site doesn't call for you to quit using, passes no moral
judgement on your lifestyle and respects your right to make choices.
In doing so, the program creates an environment that may lead to
saner thinking and eventual abstinence, but on the users own terms.

Harm reduction comes from a place of respect, dignity and acceptance
of the fact that despite the 'war on drugs' (which has been a dismal
failure), and the criminalization of substances, society will always
be faced with a population of drug-users. It is morally imperative
for our community to embrace the struggle of the afflicted and make
that struggle our own.