Welcome to PeaSpace

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Hello and Welcome!
OK, so sat on the long and rather arduous plane journey home from the 6th National Harm Reduction Conference in Oakland (California) I thought about creating a personal webspace where I could sound off, share pics of people and places, and rave about drug policy and harm reduction.
This partially spun off a medical blog we decided to create at the conference, and partially because I just wanted a space to be able to say stuff that I can't say elsewhere, or in academic writing.


Being at the conference was for me a perfect way to re-connect with my old city of San Francisco; it's been 12 years since I lived there (I lived in the mission, between Valencia and Mission on 18th St), and because this time I saw lots of friends I don't associate with SF (friends from NYC and elsewhere) and because of the conference vibe it was easier to handle. On day One I took the walk along Market, to 'It's Tops Coffeeshop' ate my most favourite blueberry hotcakes and coffee then walked along to the Castro. Wow, what a trip down memory lane man. Everything looked quite different, but also exactly the same and I instantly knew the place again. Walking down 18th Street to my old apartment block (3435 18th St, Apt 10) was a real trip - and I remembered all those cold mornings walking to work in the center. I felt really nostalgic, but as I said this was tempered by the fact there was another focus to this trip. I'll rave more about this when I post the trip pics in my next rave ..

The conference was (as always) super good. Political agitation and radicalism were in plenty supply (which in my limited view are the only ways of changing the world of 'addiction'). I guess I was just really struck by the whole experience: the stuff about tina (Crystal Methamphetamine) really blew my mind, especially a series of talks by the stonewall project in San Francisco (http://www.ucsf.edu/ghpsych/htm/progdesc.htm) and http://www.tweaker.org/html/home.html. They talked about their experiences of working with gay men who use crystal and also, critically from my point of view again, the way the whole gay 'community' has developed into one long fuck fest for those with the right looks, body, money, cock size and general disposition. It really resonated with me. Whilst in San Francisco, a good friend, and champion of gay men's health and harm reduction told me a story about going to Pride, in Amsterdam this summer (2006). He is an older man, and went to a social for older gay men- guess what? on the ppaerwork for this gig, it said 'for older (over 35) gay men'. Oy! what chance do we stand in this homophobic world when we cant even accept and care about each other. Anyways, don't get me started on that for God's sake. We'll be here all night! Anyways, it has me thinking about tina in London, and UK in general and how we respond? An accepting harm reduction approach seems to work there really well. The panels about HIV & AIDS in Oakland were fucking tragic. The over representation of people of colour is an incredible statistic and the 'health emergency' status seems to offer little to change that. The panel (of public health nerds) spoke about drug use and HIV and the lack of training in medical and other health curicula (again, one of my main hobby horses). Remember, AIDS isn't over untill it's over!

On the heroin overdose front, I delivered a paper (maybe I can link my slides here? ha! what an idea!) on our experiences in London, but this is as nothing to the work my colleagues in New Mexico are doing. From my lips to God's ears- it's incredible. Narcan work, methadone in prisons, prevention work- it's stunning. It puts our purile position in the UK into context. Either you want to save lives or you don't right? why argue? we know narcan works! I guess til the quacks agree we're all fucked! It's just so frustrating knowing one small injection could have saved my Dad's live 21 years ago ... me and thousands of others suffer the loss of loved ones because the quacks are too fucking precious to sign that little script. Anyways. We need univeral over-the-counter access to narcan NOW! no more procastination.
I guess the other very cool thing that happened at the conference was a medics in harm reduction group got together (about 20 of us) and a new blogspot is to be created to help us feel less isolated, challenge curricula and share innovative practice, watch this space- I will link to it as soon as it gets going.

Comments

Unknown said…
hi! the site looks great! i didn't have time to read everything (my exam is tomorrow...) but the pictures look great! and it looks cool, like a diary or so eh. just as well there is facebook so i can use that to mail you:) i never thought that mail came from you. i was actually worried it might affect my computer here, but it doesn't seem to have happened. big hug! nada
25 February 2008 at 17:16:00 GMT
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