News and recovery-oriented commentary about current controversies, emerging trends and research findings related to drug and alcohol addiction, treatment and recovery.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Insite on CBC
CBC has a program on Vancouver's supervised injection center.
Thank you so much for posting this! It really put some faces on all the talk we've had about harm reduction.
Don't get me wrong, I can see the importance of the social connections that Insite is providing for individuals. At the same time, what I found most disturbing was the situation with the woman, Shelley, who came to Insite to relapse.
I felt like with her life on the line, couldn't they do a little more to help her? Helping her get a hold of some pharmacies? Hooking her up with some non-methadone treatment?
I think one can be non-judgmental and say "You deserve sobriety" at the same time.
On the other hand, what I saw was an addict looking for an excuse to use. Who among us hasn't been there. It's very common to self sabotage when things are going well and everything is falling into place. To be honest, I wasn't surprised and she didn't ask for help. Even Darwin commented to her that it shouldn't be that hard to move a prescription. IMHO, her inner demons told her she didn't deserve the good things that were happening to her and she listened...
Dr. Gabor Mate's book, 'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts' is a must read, it's awesome.
Sure it was something of a manufactured crisis, but it sounded like she was getting crappy treatment and was surrounded by professionals who had very little faith in her and treated all choices as equal.
Gabor Mate seems interesting but he lost me when he seemed to be pushing talk therapy for childhood sexual abuse with a person who is still in detox. Also, 100% of the female clients had childhood sexual abuse? I believe that the rate is obscenely high and it's an important factor, but 100%? Come on.
A lot of this stuff feels like there's strange romanticism of the addict's suffering and their role in helping these poor wretches.
3 comments:
Thank you so much for posting this! It really put some faces on all the talk we've had about harm reduction.
Don't get me wrong, I can see the importance of the social connections that Insite is providing for individuals. At the same time, what I found most disturbing was the situation with the woman, Shelley, who came to Insite to relapse.
I felt like with her life on the line, couldn't they do a little more to help her? Helping her get a hold of some pharmacies? Hooking her up with some non-methadone treatment?
I think one can be non-judgmental and say "You deserve sobriety" at the same time.
On the other hand, what I saw was an addict looking for an excuse to use. Who among us hasn't been there. It's very common to self sabotage when things are going well and everything is falling into place. To be honest, I wasn't surprised and she didn't ask for help. Even Darwin commented to her that it shouldn't be that hard to move a prescription. IMHO, her inner demons told her she didn't deserve the good things that were happening to her and she listened...
Dr. Gabor Mate's book, 'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts' is a must read, it's awesome.
Sure it was something of a manufactured crisis, but it sounded like she was getting crappy treatment and was surrounded by professionals who had very little faith in her and treated all choices as equal.
Gabor Mate seems interesting but he lost me when he seemed to be pushing talk therapy for childhood sexual abuse with a person who is still in detox. Also, 100% of the female clients had childhood sexual abuse? I believe that the rate is obscenely high and it's an important factor, but 100%? Come on.
A lot of this stuff feels like there's strange romanticism of the addict's suffering and their role in helping these poor wretches.
Post a Comment