His comment about the Zurich drug
consumption room initially infuriated
me – that it was the ‘beginnings of
quarantining’ – but then I wondered
whether he was simply expressing
profound fear; after all, he is off drugs,
but oddly exposed himself in the Zurich
DCR to heroin, even smelling a fellow
‘addict’s’ silver foil.
His drug policy activist self is a few
years old: he is in early adolescence, as it
were. So I can understand why hardcore
harm reducers have trepidation about
him being our current spokesperson. I
say we give him time.
Just a thought.
Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt
twelve-step success
We should all be indebted to Rowdy
Yates for his excellent letter in your
February edition (page 14).
As Rowdy indicated, in the UK we
constantly find that the biggest barrier
to public, press and political support for
successful training is the false idea sold
by the psycho-pharm commercial
interests to politicians, when 60 years
ago they were told ‘we recommend
opioid substitution therapy in the form
of prescribed daily methadone doses, to
be supplied free to addicts and paid for
by taxpayers, because addiction is
basically incurable.’
That ‘sales talk’ was swallowed
hook, line and sinker by press and
politicians everywhere, who have since
so often repeated it that they have no
wish to now lose face by contradicting
themselves.
This false ‘incurable’ impression is
unfortunately reinforced by the one to
three years it takes well-meaning 12-
step practitioners to achieve a 20 to 30
per cent lasting abstinence result –
especially as, on a residential basis, it
seldom if ever meets the 12 months
free of addiction requirements of
payment by results.
However, those low percentage,
long-winded 12-step results should not,
for two reasons, be sneered at because
they don’t deliver on a PbR basis. One,
because not-for-profit fellowship does
not need payment by results to survive,
and two, because we know that ARTS’
initial drug-free ‘withdrawal
procedures’ can both shorten 12-steps’
duration and improve the number of
successes.
Ken Eckersley, CEO Addiction Recovery
Training Services (ARTS)
April 2015 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 15
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letters may be edited for space or clarity.
‘His drug policy
activist self is a
few years old:
he is in early
adolescence, as it
were. So I can
understand why
hardcore harm
reducers have
trepidation about
him being our
current spokes-
person. I say we
give him time.’
/DDNMagazine @DDNMagazine
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