Harm Reduction Resources and Education

Harm Reduction Resources and Education updated their website address.

Harm reduction therapy may vary depending on geographical location. In some situations it may be as simple as a handful of condoms and a pamphlet on safe s*x. Or a cup full of methadone meant to take the edge off withdrawal.

Most major cities have some type of needle exchange program in which an addict may exchange used syringes for fresh ones. Users are educated how to avoid associated maladies such as overdose, cotton fever, infection, abscesses and the transmission of Hepatitis C and HIV.

Other forms of harm reduction such as supervised injection facilities and drug replacement therapy have yet to make it into the United States. The idea is that by giving op**te addicts clean doses in a controlled environment, they reduce the negative consequences associated with street drugs. There are supervised injection facilities in Holland, Germany and Canada.

Syringe distribution has had success with reducing the spread of deadly viruses. But consequently, when you get a addict high, it affects the lives of everyone close to them. The truth is that some people will continue to use drugs, no matter what, until they decide they are ready to seek addiction treatment.

Harm reduction asks care providers to meet everyone where they’re at. In order to do this, it is important to know why and how drug use started or why someone is considering using. The reasons are unique to each person, and change over time.

It’s what’s known
Pleasure, entertainment, or sense of wellbeing
Pills from a doctor aren’t working anymore
It’s cheaper than other kinds of care
Escape, coping, or numbing
Distance from emotions or feelings of unworthiness
Soften the pain of another trouble
Self-medicating for anxiety, depression, or trauma
To stay awake all night, or squelch hunger or cold
Considerations about how to implement a harm reduction approach in a clinical setting are complex. Some settings think of harm reduction as any positive movement towards sobriety. Other settings think of harm reduction as any positive movement, even if sobriety is not the current goal. Other settings think of harm reduction as anything to reduce risk in that moment, regardless of what happens in the next moment. These theoretical differences can be difficult to operationalize in programmatic standards.

Harm reduction accepts that licit and illicit drug use is part of our world and chooses to minimize the harmful effects rather than ignore, condemn, or criminalize them. Some of the principles of harm reduction include:

Providing a spectrum of strategies from safer use, to managed use, to abstinence.
Addressing the conditions of use.
Approaching with a non-judgmental, non-coercive provision of services and resources.
Including the voice and insight of people that use or have used drugs in the creation of programs and policies.
The biggest misconception is that harm reduction denies that drugs are harmful or even that harm reduction promotes drug use. In fact, harm reduction addresses and mitigates the harms to themselves and others. Another misconception is that harm reduction encourages use. Rather, harm reduction recognizes that when licit and/or illicit drug use is happening, there are effective strategies to make use less harmful.

In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical community that patients would not become addicted to opioid pain relievers and healthcare providers began to prescribe them at greater rates. Increased prescription of opioid medications led to widespread misuse of both prescription and non-prescription opioids before it became clear that these medications could indeed be highly addictive. Opioid overdoses accounted for more than 42,000 deaths in 2016, more than any previous year on record. An estimated 40% of opioid overdose deaths involved a prescription opioid.