Safe Injection Rooms Debate

[Leaping Lindner]

I don't agree with the Libs, Labor or Family First on this one, but then again I actually worked in drug and alcohol rehab for sometime.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/0 ... coffscoast

[Psyber]

From my experience in Melbourne from 1999 to 2008, I've been concerned that too many people's jobs depend on maintaining a pool of addicts to work with, keeping the industry viable.
There is, thus, a conflict with the aim of actually rehabilitating people rather than simply patching them up through each crisis.
I saw the detoxification programmes in Victoria as largely token, given the popular view in the industry that 5 days detoxification was adequate, then discharge to the busy GP's care..
I met great resistance to any suggestion more should be done among those in the field, although nobody responded to my letter to a journal there.
[This was despite the editor telling me he had approached several people in the industry to respond to my challenge.]

I had some involvement in the alcohol and drug programme at a hospital in SA during my public system career in the 1970s.
Back then we were very conscious that, while acute alcohol withdrawal occurred in the first 4 or 5 days, secondary withdrawal tended to occur in day 10 to 14.
There were many published papers suggesting the full on DTs and relapses were more common during the secondary withdrawal phase.
Certainly, my experience was that people started to give themselves excuses to relapse about day 11.
There was also evidence that the dominant physiological withdrawal reactions from most addictive substances are prominent for up to 14 days.

So, I believed a real detoxification programme should be at least 14 days, and be followed by an appropriate support programme for several weeks, not the 5 day revolving door provided in Melbourne.
I also argued that methadone and Subutex substitution for narcotics went on too long and served to maintain the status quo, without enough effort to effect behavioural and attitudinal change.
It's a bit like the big pharmaceutical companies approach to nicotine addiction - that are happy to maintain the addiction and just want the nicotine supply to come from their product instead of tobacco.

[Ronnie]

From my experience in Melbourne from 1999 to 2008, I've been concerned that too many people's jobs depend on maintaining a pool of addicts to work with, keeping the industry viable.
There is, thus, a conflict with the aim of actually rehabilitating people rather than simply patching them up through each crisis.
I saw the detoxification programmes in Victoria as largely token, given the popular view in the industry that 5 days detoxification was adequate, then discharge to the busy GP's care..
I met great resistance to any suggestion more should be done among those in the field, although nobody responded to my letter to a journal there.
[This was despite the editor telling me he had approached several people in the industry to respond to my challenge.]

I had some involvement in the alcohol and drug programme at a hospital in SA during my public system career in the 1970s.
Back then we were very conscious that, while acute alcohol withdrawal occurred in the first 4 or 5 days, secondary withdrawal tended to occur in day 10 to 14.
There were many published papers suggesting the full on DTs and relapses were more common during the secondary withdrawal phase.
Certainly, my experience was that people started to give themselves excuses to relapse about day 11.
There was also evidence that the dominant physiological withdrawal reactions from most addictive substances are prominent for up to 14 days.

So, I believed a real detoxification programme should be at least 14 days, and be followed by an appropriate support programme for several weeks, not thae 5 day revolving door provided in Melbourne.
I also argued that methadone and Subutex substitution for narcotics went on too long and served to maintain the status quo, without enough effort to effect behavioural and attitudinal change.
It's a bit like the big pharmaceutical companies approach to nicotine addiction - that are happy to maintain the addiction and just want the nicotine supply to come from their product instead of tobacco.

You got it in one, it might sound harsh but too many dregs have a vested interest in this activity. Besides, it's a moral quagmire, do the Police take action within a certain vicinity of these places, or are they supposed to let it all go.

[Psyber]

I don't know that I'd say "dregs". Most of the people who work in this area are well meaning, but get locked into the accepted pattern of the system without realising it, then they need to defend it.
It is a bit like the tendency I observed in Melbourne of the, admittedly overloaded, public psychiatric services in Melbourne to diagnose anybody who symptoms were a bit on the mild side as having a "Personality Disorder" rather than a borderline psychosis. This meant they could legitimately, in their own perception, decline to spend the resources to treat them as they were not, by definition, "seriously mentally ill", and therefore not first priority cases for manpower expenditure.
This helped to reduce their workload and keep the resolution and turn over statistics up to the government's target levels.

[aceman]

I'm not sure there's anything 'safe' about a room where junkies go to get their kicks.