manufacturing or stocking the
short range of ‘small-doses’
essential to withdrawing their
clients from addiction.
Furthermore, with the full total
costs of OST hidden by their being
spread across several government
departments, the National Audit
Office reports an annual cost of
£9.4bn to maintain and support
former illicit addicts on methadone
or buprenorphine, etc. But we
know that 13 weeks of proven
addiction recovery training
technology would cure 70 to 75 per
cent of them.
Cures taking 13 weeks and six to
nine months may not be ‘quick
fixes’, but, in less than a year, we
would start significantly reducing
the number of addicts from 5.2m
to 1.56m, whilst at the same time
saving £9.65bn every year for the
next 20+ years.
E. Kenneth Eckersley, C.E.O.
Addiction Recovery Training Services
(ARTS)
shared care pLea
In 2018, how can a person die at age
49, a son and father, and it be
somehow acceptable, expected?
There may be a review, but due to
his lifestyle it will not really be
questioned. In fact he may not be
the only one this week, but still it
won’t sound any major alarm bells.
And yet we live in one of the best
cities to live in the UK – just not if
you struggle with substance misuse.
At 49, his death was not
unexpected. In the drug and
alcohol service we like to think we
tried hard to prevent it, with
frequent appointments and letter
writing to the other services
involved. We wanted to apply for
inpatient detox funding from our
limited, rationed budget. We
needed mental health to support
this as he had a dual diagnosis and
was prescribed antipsychotics –
largely unmonitored – for years.
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
He was given the familiar
message, and to live with constant
voices in your head and be told you
can’t access help until you stop
drinking is a hard position to find
yourself in. How do you even start
this process when you know alcohol
is the one thing to quieten them?
There is no longer a link mental
health worker who would pick up
people struggling like this, no single
point of contact for patients with
the most complex needs.
He was clearly ill, he knew it, we
all knew it. He didn’t access his GP
– perhaps he may have if we still
had access to the more specialist
GP service set up for those with
housing issues or substance
misuse, but that closed some years
ago. It’s still fondly remembered by
patients and the staff still working
in the sector, but shared care
stopped so there is no ‘specialist ‘
at the GP service.
Logically, he could have spoken
to the doctors and nurses at the
substance misuse service, but they
can only address his drug and
alcohol problems – although on a
different day and in a different
location they could help with these
other problems and refer him for
help rather than ask others to do it.
Why have we become so
sectorised? We can’t even
communicate electronically, as our
systems don’t talk to each other.
He will not be the only one dying
needlessly. The case will be discussed
and the usual topics will come up –
mental health services, primary care
support, access to detox funding, but
there is no money and no joined-up
thinking. He has been failed by a
system content to fail, to let down
some of the most vulnerable in
society with increasingly complex
mental and physical health
problems. In any other population,
young adults dying at such
frequency would cause an outcry.
Here, well, ‘it was expected’.
Name and address supplied
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In response to our Facebook story ‘140 lives “saved” during
first months of safe injecting room trial in Melbourne’
Alexandra Georgina Harrison
To the opposition saying it sends the wrong message to kids, what about
bars and pubs? People kill themselves slowly on a regular basis with alcohol
and no one bats an eye.
Gary Wicker
Sadly this is a little skewed as one working in the drug and substance field
for 15 years. What they don't share is the related drug or substance deaths
from increased drug use as many will be logged as natural causes and not
related to drug-related death… it only works for a few and will not help the
majority become substance free, but only as I have witnessed create a
stable crutch of use for those using. I have tried both models and my own
personal feeling is this is a model filled with many pitfalls and cannot be
sustained due to huge cost, and nobody is willing to pick up these immense
staffing and substance costs. Having said that I am willing to give it a go if
it saves just one life and a family from a life destroyed by drug misuse.
Larry Barnett
Brushing it under the rug doesn't help. Provide support. No matter what.
Safer for everybody… People use, for whatever reason, and sometimes the
back story associated with the use is harrowing. Sometimes ‘everyday’
people in ‘everyday’ walks of life use. Supporting clean use makes absolute
sense. Demonising, punishing, persecuting, ostracising is ridiculous. Make it
safe, clean, accepting, supportive, helpful, love.
/DDNMagazine @DDNMagazine
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
October 2018 | drinkanddrugsnews | 13