‘High Price: Thinking about Drugs with a Social Conscience’ by Carl Hart

December 23, 2014 by

I often read about psychoactive drugs being ‘evil’. However, drugs themselves don’t have the capacity to be evil. They are a powder, not a person.

Moreover, the psychoactive effects of drugs are not fixed. As I have described in an article on this website, drug effects are not just dependent on the chemical substance itself, but also on the person and the setting in which the drug is taken.

Drugs are often used by people to cope with psychological pain in their life. For example, many people who become addicted to the pain killer heroin have been abused in their lives. Many people drink alcohol excessively to help them deal with problems in their life. Sadly, society focuses on the symptoms (e.g. drug use) rather than the underlying problem (e.g. trauma).

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What Works in Treatment?: Sapphire’s Story, Part 2

November 6, 2013 by

rsz_img_2115Last week, we looked at Sapphire’s Story, with the aim of showing the importance of person-centered treatment. Along Sapphire’s journey into and out of addiction, things went well when Sapphire was intimately involved in decisions about her treatment, but poorly when professionals took sole control.

We left Sapphire’s Story after the Community Drugs Treatment had reduced her prescribed methadone dose against her will and she started to use street drugs again. She eventually became addicted to crack. This drug took over Sapphire’s life, until the day she ended up in hospital: “I’m not sure what actually happened one particular day. I know that I had been up for about five days smoking crack and I think I had a fit and was taken to hospital.”

Sapphire was transferred to the drug and alcohol unit of the hospital and put on a high dose of methadone. When she left this unit, she did not go back to the controlling and abusive man she had been living with since she was 16 years old.  Her parents had found out about her drug-taking and became very supportive.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,