Whitney, I remember, informed me (through reading about her escapades) of crack smoking methods for the very rich; ie -she made her own ‘the crack blunt’ -basically using cigar papers, (or by emptying a cigar) she’d roll up marijuana, stuff loads of it in there, and stick an 8 ball of crack in there as well -and that was how she would smoke! Now thats an 8th of an ounce my friends (3.5 gms yes?).  She talked about this on her 2009 Oprah interview.. Now imagine that to blow your Godamn socks off! And of course she would cook up her crack, it appeared looking at the fotos of her bathroom that were exposed a couple of years back (and re-exposed recently). She would cook up coke in the spoon, so she had obviously ditched the fussy freebase way and just gone straight for the bicarb. Although her chauffeur of many years has recently come out and said his car caught fire when Whitney and Bobbi were freebasing in the backseat of their limmo.

Now anyone who has experienced the scary intensity of a stimulant dependence will know, looking at Whitney’s bathroom pics, at what kind of state she would have been in, and when your bathroom gets like that, then things are pretty intense. But it was the psychological stuff that was really concerning, that level of drug activity is going to end up in disaster -and with stimulants you just know that paranoia is going to set in at some stage down that drug smoking road when your using massive amounts of drugs.
Whitney’s psychosis got so bad (she sent her cleaners home, moved Tina Brown Bobby’s sister who also had a crack problem)and just lived in her bathroom and bedroom. Tina sold her story to the press but said that Whitney would be covered in bruises where she used to hit and punch herself really hard becoz she thought demons were coming up through the floor into her body – or she would see them trying to get out of her body and into Bobbi brown so she’d hit herself again. It must have been crazy to live like that and it is incredible really that it seemed to go on for so long.

It really sounded like a painful existence, to have all that money and all those drugs, and because society does not let us discuss our drug user sensibly,  and the media will not let celebrities have a drug problem without screwing them to death over it -people just hide stuff, take cover, get out the way of people who will judge you as so often so many do…

Whitney’s daughter seems to have her own problems, her ex boyfriend saying she has a serious coke problem and pictures being leaked of her snorting lines…How on earth she managed to grow up level headed in those extremely intense and excessive surroundings -must have been almost impossible -  however she certainly did have a close relationship with her mother – who did seem to share an especially strong bond with her -which surprises none of us as we know how deep that love for our children goes – drugs or no drugs.  She ‘appears’ to have a drug problem as cited by ex boyfriends etc, and she was certainly around her mum and dad when things were at their craziest. How she will fare is anyone’s guess in Hollywood with all that money and temptation all around you to just wanna forget…

We are starting to hear now about the days before Whitneys death and her totally wasted state. I dont know what im trying to say about all this except it seems painful indeed to watch (becoz we can watch it all) how someone, who really did have one of the best voices of all time -fall into such a desperate state. Her interviews with Oprah make compelling viewing, she was clearly in love with Bobbi Brown, truely madly and deeply, despite him appearing like a temperamental bully, who would flip into a rage at a seconds notice and whom she always seemed to be appeasing. What a mess it all got. How awful to have ones messes thrown across the pages of the worlds tabloids and gossip columns for all to see..

It is said Whitney has spent her 180million fortune and was effectively broke just recently. That is some serious goddamn money to go through on drugs and fast living. Again, im not sure what i am trying to say, just that I wanted to remember her, hold up a little torch and say -as a using community – we understand the difficulties of drug dependence when it gets really ugly -and I just wish we didnt have a society that has made it almost impossible for society to learn how to use drugs in moderation, not in excess, that we could buy clean, safer, cheaper drugs…It is perhapsnot suprising at all however that we will probably find Whitney died from prescription drugs given to her by a multitude of doctors who just kept accepting the cheques she gave for another prescription (but we cant blame the Dr’s really either coz we know how they get hassled and pleaded with to prescribe something to help/get through). But it is typical nevertheless -Get her off the illicit drugs only to stuff her full of the legal ones. Im not blaming anyone here, just trying to show some sadness for the way Whitney spent the last years of her life. It doesnt seem right does it? We will remember her amongst our using community, as yet another victim of hollywood excess, hypocrisy, and a developing drugs culture that has no ability to guide generations effectively through the tricky minefield of psychoactive substances.
RIP Whitney..

Authors: Eka Iakobishvili and  Claudia Stoicescu

Vladimir Putin wrote a recent column praising the potential for “internet-based democracy”. But the Russian government adopts rules allowing for websites to be shut down on a

Vladimir Putin's iron grip on power continues to circumvent free speech in Russia, as yet again, HIV & drug organisations like ARF are targeted.

whim, and has used those rules to close down HIV prevention sites.

He talked about free medical care being one of the priorities of Russian citizens. But that care denied to millions of Russian people.

While Prime Minister Putin spoke glowingly of digital democracy, his anti-drugs agency is censoring websites for writing about WHO essential medicine.

“[It's over] methadone, plain and simple” said Anya Sarang, President of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation, which had its website shut down over the weekend.

The government’s anti-drugs agency, FSKN Moscow Department demanded that the Andrey Rylkov Foundation’s service provider block their website, utilizing new rules adopted last year. The notification states it was due to “placement of materials which propagandize (advertise) the use of drugs, information about distribution, purchasing of drugs and inciting the use of drugs”

What the Foundation was doing was spreading the word about basic HIV prevention measures and commenting on the Russian government’s policies.

Amidst pro-democracy protests, the Russian authorities have taken what is an ongoing assault on HIV prevention to the next level by moving to silence public health advocates whose only infraction has been to spread life-saving information online and to criticize the government for its own failures.

Russia is home to one of the biggest populations of injecting drug users, and one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in the world. It is estimated that there are just under two million injecting drug users in Russia. In some regions, more than 80 percent of people living with HIV in the country contracted the virus through injecting with contaminated equipment.

According to the World Health Organization, methadone is an essential medicine, for treating heroin dependence and for preventing HIV transmission by reducing the practice of injecting. Multiple scientific studies back this up.

But the Russian government’s ‘zero tolerance’ approach to illicit drugs is well known and has resulted in the outright denial of methadone (or ‘opioid substitution therapy’). It is illegal in Russia.

The net result of these policies is a massive increase in the number of people living with HIV in the country over the last decade.

According to UNAIDS, “In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, there was a 250% increase in the number of people living with HIV from 2001 to 2010. The Russian Federation and Ukraine account for almost 90% of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region’s epidemic. Injecting drug use remains the leading cause of HIV infection in this region”.

“People all over the world take this medication for granted” says Sarang, “but here in Russia it’s central to our struggle against HIV and it’s banned. Now, even our speaking about it seems to be banned.”

This is not the first time Russia has attempted to censor civil society voices for public health. At the UN General Assembly talk on HIV last March the Russian delegation tried to stop a Ukrainian drug user from speaking about HIV prevention. Fortunately, others were not happy with such censorship and the effort failed.

“The right to information is essential to realizing the right to health,” said Agnes Callamard, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, in a statement. “A government agency such as Federal Drug Control Service should not have the ability to ban websites at the whim of a bureaucrat. This is particularly so when considering the impact of censoring discussions relating to drug addiction or HIV/AIDS.”

For years, human rights advocates like the Andrey Rylkov Foundation have argued that Russia’s colossal failure to provide vital services is a breach of its obligation under international law to respect, protect and fulfill the right to health. The government’s latest crackdown against public health activists has turned the matter into an issue of freedom of expression.

Mr. Putin says that democracy needs “efficient channels for dialogue… communication and feedback,” while the government’s actions silence people fighting to raise issues the government is refusing to face. This silences the spread of information. It silences the democratic process.

Source of publication: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Categories: Drug policy in Russia, Russia and OST | Tags: ARF, Federal Drug Control Service, HIV, Methadone, OST, press about ARF | No Comments »

Related articles

• Vladimir Putin, Falling Czar (businessweek.com)
• Violent ‘Russian Spring’ protests could follow a Vladimir Putin victory: Opposition leader (news.nationalpost.com)
• Hackers Expose Emails About Bribes Within Russian Media (newsy.com)
• Zakaria: How oil is propping up Putin (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)

Quoting the article “The definition [of recovery] is the product of a year-long effort by SAMHSA and a wide range of partners in the behavioral health care community and other fields to develop a working definition of recovery that captures the essential, common experiences of those recovering from mental disorders and substance use disorders, along with major guiding principles that support the recovery definition”

Please do click the link at the bottom of this blogs section to find the article in its entirety, but just to summarise things here -and I have to add, I feel this is a very well good definition of recovery and alludes to what many of us have been saying for a long time. That it benefits to shift the focus off drug use per say and embrace the fact that it is about positive, meaningful change, wherever that may take you and whatever that may look like.

But back to the SAHMSA definition – Here is the resulting formulation:

Working Definition of Recovery

Recovery is a process of change whereby individuals work to improve their own health and wellness and to live a meaningful life in a community of their choice while striving to achieve their full potential.

Principles of Recovery

Person-driven;
Occurs via many pathways;
Is holistic;
Is supported by peers;
Is supported through relationships;
Is culturally-based and influenced;
Is supported by addressing trauma;
Involves individual, family, and community strengths and responsibility;
Is based on respect; and
Emerges from hope.

Furthermore SAMHSA’s Recovery Support Initiative identifies four major domains that support recovery:

Health: overcoming or managing one’s disease(s) as well as living in a physically and emotionally healthy way;
Home: a stable and safe place to live that supports recovery;
Purpose: meaningful daily activities, such as a job, school, volunteerism, family caretaking, or creative endeavors, and the independence, income and resources to participate in society; and
Community: relationships and social networks that provide support, friendship, love, and hope.

Click below for the rest of the article and hear more from Stanton’s engaging summary.

The Meaning of Recovery Has Changed, You Just Don’t Know It | Psychology Today.

Patients' relatives outside rehab centre, Lima (28 January) foto thanks to bbc.co.uk (click for link))

We remember -and we are angry. This is a letter sent by INPUD’s Exec Director Eliot Albers, to the Peruvian Ambassador following the deaths of 27 people in a‘rehab’ facility in Lima. The facility, unregulated and highly questionable in its approach to treatment, is believed to have locked people inside rooms as a matter of course, and it was where they perished when a fire broke out.  One can only imagine the terror felt by those inside during the last minutes of their lives, the screams and the panic. This torturous anguish will be only be equalled by the grief and guilt felt by the parents and loved ones who had been duped into paying money to keep their loved ones in, what they now know fully to be, such cruel conditions. Sadly, as Eliot’s letter illustrates -this is not the only instance of a massacre in a rehab, occurring because we are accepting people being ‘treated’ by being locked in, chained to beds, prevented from leaving (so called voluntary centres) by double bolted steel doors etc – with no thought as to fire hazards or emergency access -and all the while taking money from and placating terrified parents, that, yes, your children are in safe hands. Safer here than on the streets, at least you’ll know they are safe in their beds tonight….And the metal doors slam, and the bolts lock ‘em in tight, as inmates at these ‘voluntary’ centres press their ears to the wall to listen out for the echoes, for the crackling and spitting sounds of fire, edging its way up the hall…

‘Find links to bbc news video and newspaper articles on the fire after the letter, below. 

Sent: February 3, 2012 10:48 AM

Letter to the Peruvian Ambassador

Your Excellency   I am writing to you as Executive Director of the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) on behalf of my membership. We are recognized by theUNODC, UNAIDS and other multilateral bodies concerned with illegal drugs and health issues as the peak international NGO representing this often highly stigmatized community. A substantial proportion of our membership fall into that category of the drug using population who are most likely to seek help should their drug use become problematic, they often live on the fringes of society and are frequently subject to human rights abuses, and subsequently significant threats to their health and well-being. The stigma and discrimination directed at this sector of the population enables a climate in which sub-standard, and in the case that prompts me to write to you, lethal treatment can flourish.

27 dead – ‘Clarion Call’

Sunday’s tragic fire at Lima’s ‘Christ is Love’ facility which resulted in 27 deaths[1] is a clarion call to the Peruvian government to take a long hard look at the quality standards, or lack thereof, under which many such private sector facilities operate in Peru. We note that this problem is not limited to Peru, but that similar lethal fires in erstwhile treatment centres for people who use drugs in which ‘patients’ have been kept chained and behind bars have also been documented in Russia[2], and lethal abuses of human rights committed by the staff of such establishments have occurred in India[3].

Milton Rojas from the Peruvian drug abuse and prevention group CEDRO estimates that only 20% of Peru’s facilities for drug treatment have licences and trained staff[4]. According to your own Health Minister, Alberto Tejada “[t]his rehabilitation centre wasn’t authorised. It was a house that they had taken over … for patients with addictions and they had the habit of leaving people locked up with no medical supervision”[5].

“It was a house that they had taken over … for patients with addictions and they had the habit of leaving people locked up with no medical supervision” Alberto Tejada, Peru’s health minister

Told to Close, Yet Still Operating?

The fact that this sort of ‘treatment’ is so widespread in your country is an affront to human dignity and a clear breach of the human right to the highest attainable standard of health, one that is only compounded by the revelation that the ‘Christ is Love’ facility had been investigated on two previous occasions[6] and been told to close, yet still continued to operate.   Keeping people seeking help when their drug use has become problematic behind bars and chained up is a breach of the inalienable right to “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health [that] is one of the fundamental rights of every human being…” enshrined in the constitution of the World Health Organisation, and guaranteed by article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which Peru has both signed and ratified. These two documents enshrine a rights based approach to health that is clearly being breached by the enforced detention and chaining practised in the ‘Christ is Love’ facility.

INPUD Calls for Review of Drug Treatment Facilities

Furthermore, Article 1 of the Peruvian Constitution states that the “defense of the human person and respect for his dignity are the supreme purpose of society and the State”, this standard should also be met by the private treatment sector , and applies as much to people who use drugs as it does to any other sector of the population. Whilst we welcome the fact that the owner of the clinic, Mr. Raul Garcia Albornoz and two others have been charged with homicide we call upon the Peruvian Government to take this opportunity to ensure that all facilities offering treatment to people experiencing problems with their drug use in Peru be reviewed, that the unlicensed ones be closed down, and that science based, human rights compliant responses to problematic drug use be scaled up and made universally available to those who need them in Peru.

INPUD E.D Calls to Meet at CND

I will be present in Vienna in March for the Commission on Narcotic Drugsand would very much welcome the opportunity of talking to your representative about finding means of ensuring that the treatment offered to people seeking help with their problematic drug use meet the highest standards, and are both human rights compliant and based on the best scientific evidence (this is often referred to as the ‘comprehensive package for responding to HIV among people who inject drugs’ and includes nine interventions that should be available to injecting drug users[7]). Deadly fires have also occurred in facilities similar to the ‘Christ is Love’ centre in other countries including Russia; perhaps, Sunday’s tragic events can be used to spur Peru to take the lead on stamping out such malpractice worldwide, an initiative that we would be more than happy to discuss with your representative in Vienna.

Your sincerely       Dr Eliot Ross Albers, PhD

Executive Director   International Network of People who Use Drugs

Related articles

• Peru drug rehabilitation centre blaze kills at least 20 – BBC News (bbc.co.uk)
• INPUD writes to Peruvian Ambassador regarding deaths in rehab. (inpud.wordpress.com)
• Peru’s health minister vows crackdown in wake of deadly rehab fire (news.blogs.cnn.com)
• VIDEO: Peru rehab centre fire kills 26 (bbc.co.uk)

Crack Heroin Meth For Life – Not!

Here is an interesting blog I just discovered -Narco Polo (www.suburra.com), a guy who is devoting his site to the pursuit of recreational drug use. His name is Rob Arthur. In his own words he is “A former inner-city teacher and public defender”. His book, You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos, takes “An anthropological look at how wrong and debilitating our beliefs are about sex, drugs, and more. It won the 2008 Montaigne Medal for most thought-provoking independent book.

Rob explains that the purpose of his blog, entitled Narco Polo is to defend recreational drug use -” and all other consensual adult activities – that the American government deems criminal. When media sensationalism and government propaganda are confronted with facts, it is apparent that the unintended consequences of these prohibitions have caused much greater suffering than the activities themselves.” Well said Rob! He certainly has something to say and would be worth a read and returning to now and again to see what interesting viewpoints he throws up.  Here’s a link to an interesting but brief blog, but do look around for some other gems.

The Surprisingly Low Addiction Rates of Crack, Heroin, and Meth

.

This is a video of the global protest that was held on World AIDS day 2011, in around 12 cities around the world, led by the drug using community and INPUD, the International Network of People who Use Drugs -protesting against to the Russian government’s shameful inaction regarding the drugs and HIV catastrophe unfolding in the region.

LONDON LOCATION DETAILS: For Russian Embassy Protest -flyer