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‘Naloxone is
significant, but it’s
not a magic bullet.
Drug-related deaths
are at record levels,
and if you look at a
map of them and a
map of deprivation
they pretty much
match each other.
What causes drug-
related deaths is
misery and
deprivation’
bigger picture and who else I could get
on board.’
The East Sussex naloxone working
group now included CGL directors, a
PHE consultant, a safer communities
board lead, CCG commissioners,
pharmacy leads and high ranking
police officers, among others, he told
delegates. The main pathways he was
hoping the group would embrace were
police custody, dispensing pharmacies,
police as first responders, A&E
departments, general hospitals, mental
health wards and ambulance crews.
‘The law has just changed and now
we’re exploring nasal naloxone, which
hopefully will be a driver for change,’
he said.
‘I
magine the person next to
you has been on a massive
alcohol binge and has drunk
in excess of a bottle of vodka
a day,’ gambling harm
consultant Owen Baily told delegates.
‘Consider how they might be feeling
and behaving. Imagine someone who
has been on a crack binge for weeks,
how they might appear to you right
now. Then imagine someone who’s
been gambling all the money they
have, they haven’t paid their rent or
Alex Boyt bought food – consider how they
might be behaving.’
Problem gamblers displayed few
behavioural indicators, despite causing great harm to themselves, he said, and it
was this capacity for problematic gambling to be concealed that led to it being
called the ‘silent’ addiction. ‘I’m calling on the drug and alcohol treatment sector to
do more to at every level to be just that little bit more curious about gambling,’ he
said, while in terms of service user involvement, Twitter was a powerful platform
that could be used to drive things forward.
‘This time last year I was heading towards the worst life crisis I’d ever
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the east Sussex
naloxone working
group now includes
CGl directors, a PHe
consultant, a safer
communities board
lead, CCG
commissioners,
pharmacy leads
and high ranking
police officers.
experienced in my adult life,’ he told the
conference. ‘I was suicidal and I’m very
fortunate that I’m not dead or in prison.
I’m not saying that to be dramatic, I’m
saying it as a matter of fact.’
He grew up in a single-parent
household and experienced emotional
bullying from his mother’s boyfriend,
later getting into drugs. ‘I’d become feral,
but it wasn’t without consequence.’ He
was permanently excluded from school,
became homeless, and was later in a
PeteR HAWley
young offenders’ institution and a bail
hostel. ‘I discovered morals and values
and an appreciation of my liberty, having had it taken away.’
He then discovered ‘just how safe it felt to play fruit machines’, he said. ‘I
cultivated very unhealthy thoughts and beliefs around gambling,’ and experiencing
a first ‘big win’ made him go on to gamble even more. He gave up his home and job
to go travelling, only to instantly gamble his money away, arriving back in the UK
homeless and destitute. ‘For want of a better phrase, I was fucked,’ he said.
Realising he had a serious problem he looked for help in the local area, but found
there was nothing. He began to drink heavily and became alcohol-dependent –
‘now I had my ticket to access local service provision’, he said, beginning a 16-year
treatment journey. ‘I went to rehab for drink and drugs, but my gambling was
mocked and ridiculed.’ Later, he began to attend a local Gamblers Anonymous
service and then the National Problem Gambling Clinic operated by the Central and
North West London NHS Foundation Trust – the only NHS clinic for the treatment of
gambling disorders.
March 2019 | drinkanddrugsnews | 15