Mark Haden 7 Community Educational Lecture Series in Surrey

Monday, March 30, 2015 | | 103 comments

Hi all,

The attached lectures are available with a single registration for each lecture…. The first lecture is sold out.

YOU CAN NOT REGISTER FOR ALL 6 REMAINING LECTURES

 

Registration for the April 14th lecture will OPEN on the morning of the 8th…( the morning after the last lecture…and so on …and so on……there are a lot of people already poised to register on the 8th

 

Respectfully,

 

 

Keith Smith,

Founder

SANSU

Surrey Area Network of Substance Users

"...We Live Here Too!"

Email: sansusurrey@gmail.com

Ph: 604-612-7070

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THIS E-MAIL COMMUNICATION IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE USE OF THE ADDRESSEE AND MAY CONTAIN INFORMATION WHICH IS PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL.  IF YOU ARE NOT THE INTENDED RECIPIENT, YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED THAT ANY DISSEMINATION, DISTRIBUTION OR COPYING OF THIS COMMUNICATION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.  IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS COMMUNICATION IN ERROR, PLEASE NOTIFY ME IMMEDIATELY AND DESTROY THE ORIGINAL. THANK YOU.

 

 

 

From: Mark Haden [mailto:mark@markhaden.com]
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2015 3:20 PM
To: 'John Doe'
Subject: RE: SANSU-Poster PROTOTYPE ONLY- Mark Haden 7 Community Educational Lecture Series

 

Hi Keith,

Do you have a final poster?  I will send out widely.

Cheers,

Mark Haden

 

From: John Doe [mailto:sansusurrey@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2015 3:14 PM
To: Shayne Williams; Erin Gibson; Stephen (Steve) Dooley; Aileen Murphy; Kerr, Colleen; Tokaryk, Jacki; Ron Moloughney; Sandy Moro; Marie Schneider; Nancy Fitzpatrick; Mark Haden
Subject: SANSU-Poster PROTOTYPE ONLY- Mark Haden 7 Community Educational Lecture Series
Importance: High

 

Good Day All

 

The attached

SANSU PROTOTYPE POSTER

is for your immediate feedback for changes, additions, subtractions, etc.

 

Your feedback will be due by Friday March 6th 4:30pm

 

The final poster will be released Saturday, March 7th for your further dispersal

 

 

Drugs, Families & Society

Series of 7 Community Education Lectures

BY
Mark Haden, M.S.W.

Adjunct Professor UBC School of Population and Public Health

At Simon Fraser University-Surrey Campus 13450 – 102nd Avenue, Surrey, BC

All Lecturers Start at 6:00pm-8:00pm Sharp

Refreshments & Networking at 5:30pm

 

Lecture & Discussion 1: The Development of Addiction- Tues, April 7th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

Understanding problematic substance use

Lecture & Discussion 2: Chemicals and the Body- Tues, April 14th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

How the body systems are effected by alcohol and other drugs

Lecture & Discussion 3: The Recovery Process- Tues, April 21th, 2015-Room SUR 5140

What is treatment?

Lecture & Discussion 4: The Family Context- Tues, April 28th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

Family dynamics where addiction is a problem

Lecture & Discussion 5: Helping others- Tues, May 5th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

What you can do if your child, partner or family member has problematic substance use

Lecture & Discussion 6: Harm Reduction Theory- Tues, May 12th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

This presentation explores the theory, history and evidence behind the harm reduction approach to drugs and drug users

Lecture & Discussion 7: Healing our Society- Tues, May 19th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

A public health approach to illegal drugs or “why drug prohibition does not work” and “what are the alternatives”?

***These lecturers are bold in the exploration of new ideas***

 

Some of the themes and topics explored in this lecturers include:

ü  Honest drug education – which offers an apology for the dishonesty of the past

ü  Addiction as an attachment disorder

ü  Supervised injection sites are a compassionate service response

ü  A public health approach to the regulation of currently illegal drugs

ü  Harm reduction is keeping someone alive long enough to seek help

 

RSVP via Eventbrite.com                       Limited Audience Capacity

 

                               

 

Hosted by: SANSU- Surrey Area Network of Substance Users

Partnered Educational Sponsors: Fraser Health Authority, City of Surrey, Simon Fraser University, Lookout Society,

Royal Canadian Legion-Peace Arch Zone- Ladies Auxiliary

 

 

 

Respectfully,

 

 

Keith Smith,

Founder

SANSU

Surrey Area Network of Substance Users

"...We Live Here Too!"

Email: sansusurrey@gmail.com

Ph: 604-612-7070

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THIS E-MAIL COMMUNICATION IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE USE OF THE ADDRESSEE AND MAY CONTAIN INFORMATION WHICH IS PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL.  IF YOU ARE NOT THE INTENDED RECIPIENT, YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED THAT ANY DISSEMINATION, DISTRIBUTION OR COPYING OF THIS COMMUNICATION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.  IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS COMMUNICATION IN ERROR, PLEASE NOTIFY ME IMMEDIATELY AND DESTROY THE ORIGINAL. THANK YOU.

 

 

 

From Witchs to Crack Moms - book - Susan Boyd

Thursday, March 19, 2015 | | 0 comments

See attached

 

bruce haden - TED talks and the failure of drug prohibition

| | 0 comments

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/prohibition-on-drugs-doesnt-work-no-longer-the-answer-to-addiction/article23533161/

Heroin Assisted Treatment in Vancouver

Tuesday, March 17, 2015 | | 0 comments

 

 

From: Mark Haden [mailto:mark@markhaden.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2015 4:55 PM
To: mark@markhaden.com
Subject: FW: Psychedelics and Palliative Care

 

Heroin Assisted Treatment in Vancouver - come hear from the experts (patient, researcher, MD)!

Mar. 26 @ SFU 7-9 

rm 7000

 

FW: Psychedelics and Palliative Care

| | 1 comments

Heroin Assisted Treatment in Vancouver - come hear from the experts (patient, researcher, MD)!

Mar. 26 @ SFU 7-9 

rm 7000

 

Drugs, Families & Society-Series of 7 Community Education Lectures- Register!!!

Saturday, March 14, 2015 | | 1 comments

 

Please register for the first event and then pass this along to your friends, colleagues and professionals.

 

These lectures will fill up VERY QUICK…..!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

Drugs, Families & Society

Series of 7 Community Education Lectures

Speaker
Mark Haden, M.S.W.

Adjunct Professor UBC School of Population and Public Health

At Simon Fraser University-Surrey Campus 13450 – 102nd Avenue, Surrey, BC

All Lectures Start at 6:00pm-8:00pm Sharp

Refreshments & Networking at 5:30pm

 

Lecture & Discussion 1: The Development of Addiction- Tues, April 7th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

Understanding problematic substance use

Lecture & Discussion 2: Chemicals and the Body- Tues, April 14th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

How the body systems are effected by alcohol and other drugs

Lecture & Discussion 3: The Recovery Process- Tues, April 21th, 2015-Room SUR 5140

What is treatment?

Lecture & Discussion 4: The Family Context- Tues, April 28th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

Family dynamics where addiction is a problem

Lecture & Discussion 5: Helping others- Tues, May 5th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

What you can do if your child, partner or family member has problematic substance use

Lecture & Discussion 6: Harm Reduction Theory- Tues, May 12th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

This presentation explores the theory, history and evidence behind the harm reduction approach to drugs and drug users

Lecture & Discussion 7: Healing our Society- Tues, May 19th, 2015-Room SUR 5240

A public health approach to illegal drugs or “why drug prohibition does not work” and “what are the alternatives”?

***These lecturers are bold in the exploration of new ideas***

 

Some of the themes and topics explored in this lecturers include:

ü  Honest drug education – which offers an apology for the dishonesty of the past

ü  Addiction as an attachment disorder

ü  Supervised injection sites are a compassionate service response

ü  A public health approach to the regulation of currently illegal drugs

ü  Harm reduction is keeping someone alive long enough to seek help

 

REGISTER for each event night via the link below

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/drugs-families-and-society-time-to-change-approached-tickets-16130813698

Limited Audience Capacity             Further info: sansusurrey@gmail.com  

 

                                          

 

Hosted by: SANSU- Surrey Area Network of Substance Users

Educational Partners: Fraser Health Authority, City of Surrey, Simon Fraser University, Lookout Society,

Royal Canadian Legion-Peace Arch Zone- Ladies Auxiliary

 

 

Respectfully,

 

 

Keith Smith,

Founder

SANSU

Surrey Area Network of Substance Users

"...We Live Here Too!"

Email: sansusurrey@gmail.com

Ph: 604-612-7070

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THIS E-MAIL COMMUNICATION IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE USE OF THE ADDRESSEE AND MAY CONTAIN INFORMATION WHICH IS PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL.  IF YOU ARE NOT THE INTENDED RECIPIENT, YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED THAT ANY DISSEMINATION, DISTRIBUTION OR COPYING OF THIS COMMUNICATION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.  IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS COMMUNICATION IN ERROR, PLEASE NOTIFY ME IMMEDIATELY AND DESTROY THE ORIGINAL. THANK YOU.

 

 

 

Safe injection facilities: more than just a place to shoot drugs

Wednesday, March 4, 2015 | | 1 comments

 

Safe injection facilities: more than just a place to shoot drugs

AUTHOR

1.     

Miriam Boeri

 

Associate Professor of Sociology at Bentley University

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

Miriam Boeri does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

The Conversation is funded by Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Alfred P Sloan Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Our global publishing platform is funded by Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Safe injection facilities (SIFs) offer clean syringes, bandages and antiseptics to drug users. SIFs reduce overdose deaths and limit the spread of disease. Andy Clark/Reuters

A few years ago I visited a storefront building called InSite – the first supervised injection facility in North America. There, I saw first hand that, paradoxically, providing a safe place to take illicit drugs can be a key component to treating addiction.

Located in Vancouver's East Hastings neighborhood, the building was clean and the environment felt safe; I immediately noticed the rapport between the staff and the clients, who were mostly injection drug users.

Clients arrived with what they were bringing to inject (usually heroin or cocaine) and gave their names to a staff member. The staffer then logged this information before the clients went upstairs to the injection stalls, where syringes and other paraphernalia were available.

At one point, I heard a siren and saw an ambulance pull up across the street from the facility. The staffer and I looked out the front window as two first responders ran up the steps of a dilapidated building and returned carrying an unconscious woman on a stretcher. As they put her in the back of the ambulance, the staffer explained that the building was a shooting gallery – a place where drug users rent rooms to inject together.

"She should have come here," she said. "We have a nurse on staff."

"And it would have saved the city the costs of the emergency response," I added, watching the young woman leave the ambulance and return to the building.

An emergency ambulance costs about $1,000 per trip, on average – and much more if any medical supplies are used. Taxpayers absorb this cost for the uninsured.

Lowering public health costs is just one of the benefits of supervised injection facilities (SIFs); and with the current epidemic of street level drug use, there's no better time to open SIFs in cities across America. Yet despite an overwhelming body of evidence that favors the implementation of SIFs – and the fact that SIFs have been successfully operating in Europe and Canada for years – no legal SIFs are currently open in the United States.

The public benefits of SIFs

Why are American policymakers so reluctant to establish SIFs?

It could be because SIFs offer users drug paraphernalia, like clean needles, along with a medically trained, emergency response staff. For some Americans, this might sound like a handout; for others it's implicit support of drug use.

Nonetheless, there are a number of noted public benefits to SIFs.

The facilities can alleviate the financial burdens of the state (and taxpayer) by decreasing public health costs for medical care and emergency responses, while lowering criminal prosecution and incarceration costs. In the US, on average, per capita prison costs are $100. SIFs lower these costs by decreasing neighborhood crime and public drug use.

At a supervised injection facility in Vancouver, British Columbia, a poster demonstrates how to safely use a syringe. Andy Clark/Reuters

Click to enlarge

SIFs could also lower both emergency and long-term health care costs. Lifetime treatment costs of HIV infection is about $380,000 per infection. Studies consistently find that SIFs reduce the risk of HIV infections and other other health care expenses. For example, a person who overdoses on the street is ten times more likely to stay overnight in a hospital than one who overdoses in a SIF – saving public taxpayers $1,700.

From a public health perspective, SIFs provide a clean place to inject drugs – which reduces the spread of infectious diseases like HIV, AIDS and hepatitis C. Furthermore, wherever there are street drug users, an SIF makes the area safer by diminishing open drug use. It also curtails drug litter, such as drug bags, dirty cotton and used needles. Finally, they've been shown to reduce overdose deaths.

While SIFs – along with other harm-reduction approaches – focus on the health of drug users, there's another important benefit to the facilities: they can increase the drug users' social capital. Addiction is, above all, a social problem. And a better understanding of social causes would further build the case for these much-needed facilities.

Social roots of addiction

Humans are social creatures; most feel the need to belong to a group or community.

A little over three years ago, journalist Johann Hari traveled the world to investigate the universal causes of drug addiction. Talking with hundreds of people in places ranging from Brooklyn to Portugal, he found that drugs aren't the drivers of addiction – isolation is. Yet our society often cuts off addicts from others, either by incarcerating them or socially segregating them in addiction treatment programs. And we have known for a long time that isolating addicts doesn't make them stop using drugs.

Scientific research seems to support this.

Social scientist Bruce Alexander found that when rats were isolated in cages they self-administered morphine until they were addicted, but rats housed with other rats did not. He took this experiment further by putting the caged rats back into their natural habitat with other rats – and observed that they stopped using the drugs.

Another study using monkeys made a similar discovery. Whereas both dominant and subordinate male monkeys became addicted to cocaine when caged separately, after being housed with females only subordinate monkeys continued to self-administer cocaine.

These studies show that when it comes to addiction, social environment can have a stronger influence than brain chemistry. When I asked someone involved in the monkey study why we don't use social remedies for drug problems, he said taking a pill is easier.

Social bonds increase social capital

Social bonding is one reason the 12-step model used by Alcohol Anonymous (AA) and other recovery groups is so popular. In these groups, recovering addicts form strong bonds with other recovering addicts, which facilitates their own recovery process. However, while this model works for a time, studies have shown that recovering addicts need to be engaged in a wider community, beyond AA. To become functioning members of society, they need to increase their social capital.

Social capital refers to the connections individuals form that give them the resources to live happy, healthy, fulfilled lives. As political scientist Robert Putnam explains in his groundbreaking 2000 book Bowling Alone, when we become disconnected from family and friends and feel isolated from society, our social capital is depleted. On the other hand, building social capital is a way to promote healthy citizens and a thriving community.

We've come a long way from thinking about addiction as a moral failure, but it's important to also look beyond the notion that addiction is only a psychological disorder or brain disease.

As Johann Hari writes, "the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection."

Drugs aren't the only cause of addiction. Loneliness plays a big part. Gueorgui Tcherednitchenko/FlickrCC BY-NC-SA

A uniquely American SIF

Not all drug users become street addicts. Some are socially integrated, but these aren't the ones we segregate. It's drug injectors – especially the street injectors – who are marginalized and disenfranchised. And jailing them only increases their isolation. It's important to give these users the opportunity to become engaged in community activities.

Historians have long recognized the distinctive American characteristic that blends rugged individualism with civic engagement and community involvement. An American version of a SIF can be much more than a place that simply provides safe and clean injection facilities. It also can offer social initiatives; it can act as a community that reduces social isolation and increases social capital.

Studies have shown that we form new relationships by engaging in new social networks. In a Decatur, Georgia drug court treatment program, I used social activities to connect individuals to the local community. Within weeks they were forming new social networks and displaying healthy social habits. One young man who attended slam poetry readings started writing poetry and reading his poems before a coffeehouse audience. Another recalled his own social transformation.

"Being a felon means that I'm in a separate entity in society," he explained, "but now I have the opportunity to build relationships."

Linking addicted drug users to new social networks – other than addicts or recovering addicts – provides new opportunities for work, leisure, and friendship. A socially-focused SIF can give drug users better ideas and resources for how to spend their time participating in group activities.

Partaking in new group activities can broaden social networks – and increase social capital.txking/Shutterstock

Click to enlarge

The time is ripe for change

In the last year, governors of the states hit hardest by the opiate epidemic have begun speaking out. The governor of Vermont made it a central part of his State of the State speech last year. Meanwhile, Charlie Baker, the new governor of Massachusetts – where there has been a 46 percent increase in opiate deaths since 2012 – has made this issue one of his top priorities. His 16 member Opioid Addiction Working Group is tasked with engaging with communities and developing evidence-based strategies to combat addiction. The time is ripe for state legislation supporting SIFs that not only responds to combating addiction, but also offers a path to healthy community engagement.

Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker has formed a 16 member Opioid Addiction Working group. Perhaps the group can promote the implementation of safe injection facilities. Larry Downing/Reuters

After more than ten years of experimenting with SIFs in other countries, what additional evidence do we need? Beyond reducing health care and social services costs, a SIF facilitates drug treatment, and can provide bridges to new social networks so that those most ravaged by addiction can become productive members of society.