A possible philosophy of drug use for injecting drug users

DRUG FREE SOCIETY- ACHIEVABLE AIM OR IMMORAL DELUSION?

Criminalising drugs and drug-taking is out of step with contemporary culture, argued Gideon Warhaft at the APSAD conference in Melbourne, Australia, in 2000...

We are gathered here today to discuss the various strategies for dealing with the use and abuse of drugs in our society. What is the best way to administer methadone to patients? Should we have heroin trials? Who should or shouldn’t run them? But what vision of society do we have in mind when we talk about all this? What assumptions do we make about the success or failure of drug policy up until this point, and what do we see as being any different in the future? In short, what end game do we have in mind?

As most of us know, the detoxification process is coping with stopping, or reducing, drug use that had led to addiction, or dependency

INTRODUCTION TO DETOX

Our bodies tend to develop a tolerance to most illicit drugs with regular use, particularly heroin, amphetamines and cocaine. Detox support can help with the difficult time your body gives you when your use stops or is reduced.

Why tolerance develops

The human brain has a nifty ability to adapt to changes in body chemistry. Given the odd encounter with most drugs, illegal or otherwise, the brain lets the intruder run amok doing its thing, until broken down and excreted. But once the drug is making regular incursions, the brain sets about adapting to the new visitor so that normal functioning can occur in its presence. This is roughly how physical ‘tolerance’ develops to most drugs like smack, speed and coke. It is also why you need more and more to get the same effect with regular use.

We’re constantly bombarded with stories about how terrible drug use is, and presented with exceedingly negative views of people that use drugs

FIGHTING NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES

We always hear the stories of how terrible everything is for injecting drug users. I don’t believe that everyone has such a massively negative experience with drugs, yet we rarely hear the positive side of it.

We’re constantly bombarded with stories about how terrible drug use is, and presented with exceedingly negative views of people that use drugs. The media always presents us with the worst situations, and leads people to believe that all drug users experience drug use in that way.
In turn, people that use drugs also tend to relate their negative experiences when they write or speak to the media, because this is the way people see things as being done. If all a person ever hears is negative stories, it is likely to feed into their mind and increase the chance of them having a negative experience.