#harm redux

cause like the information leaflets they give out are good, im not denying that, they have great information for people who need it but at the same time there are many faults and things i am being nitpicky about. because i can.

like yeah coping skills and positive affirmations are great & effective for some things, but unfortunately life is filled with manmade horrors beyond our collective comprehension.

you cant positive affirmation and box breathe your way out of life threatening crises. you can't "check the facts" when the facts really are just that horrific and life altering. you can't DEARMAN and pray for the best when someone has shown you they do not care, while they have somehow convinced everyone else that they are just misguided (*cough* my sperm donor of a father *cough*)

sometimes people act crazy because what's happening to them, or happened to them in the past, is crazy making. at that point, harm reduction is what saves lives. pop psych therapy and the new age spirituality market are not the solutions to systemic issues affecting individual people's lives.

and when we cant fix the problem immediately (the system/community around the individual) the next course of action is protecting the individuals affected. in mental health care/recovery, that's what harm reduction is. and i fucking love it.

I’m sorry how are these things related? Social media is not a harm reduction tool. There’s no other form of media where social media exists as a less harmful alternative. Safe consumption sites function and exist as a less harmful alternative to shooting up in trap houses or with dirty needles on the fucking street. They aren’t comparable. Your teenager won’t die from not using social media. But teens die every day from dirty needles and overdoses. Fuck off National Post

You can't stop any habit (harmful or not) that easily

But any form of harm reduction is great

Lessening the amount of times you do the habit even a little bit

Making it safer to do

Extending the time between the urge and the action

Any food is better than nothing

Sh can be harm reduction for suicidality.

I love you <3

hey!

here's a post i've made before talking about getting involved generally in community activism and mutual aid, and here's a post about activism/protesting when you're chronically ill and are bedbound or housebound or have limited available energy.

for harm reduction organizing in specific, i got into harm reduction outreach by accessing supplies for my own use + then volunteering with existing collectives in the cities i've lived in. I've pretty much only lived in major cities for the past seven years of my life, so that's meant that it was fairly easy for me to find harm reduction organizations that were training and accepting volunteers. If you're in the US, NASEN has a pretty solid directory of most public needle exchanges and that can be a first step for finding what's in your area. if you're in a state where needle exchange is criminalized it's a lot more likely there are underground groups operating that are harder to find, but often still possible.

this shit can be a lot harder if you don't live in a city or if you live in a city with no harm reduction organizations. i've also helped build a harm reduction collective from scratch in the past couple of years to meet a need that wasn't getting met by other collectives in my city, so i have a bit of familiarity of what it looks like to start from scratch.

not entirely what you asked but i'm also going to use this ask as an excuse to make a list of things to consider if you're starting harm reduction work from scratch in the US--all my logistic and sourcing resources are US centric, unfortunately:

researching and making sure you know exactly what resources are available in your area, including state run health resources (which often can suck and aren't really resources at all!). knowing the laws around drug use, possession, paraphernalia, and harm reduction in your area. harm reduction legal project is a good resource for US drug laws.

learning about experiences with drug use, especially for drugs that aren't your primary drug of choice and that you might be less familiar with. national harm reduction coalition has a good amount of 101 level resources on various harm redux topics. erowid and bluelight have a lot of useful info of personal experiences in their forums. learn about sex work, especially experiences of sex work that you're less familiar with.

building practical skills around drug use. if you're giving out supplies, you need to understand what supplies are in demand, how those supplies are used, what preferences people have around those supplies, how supplies are connected to health outcomes (reducing infection risks, overdoses, etc), and how to teach people to use new supplies. if you've never reversed an overdose before, getting trained on how to do that beyond just the mechanics of narcan and learning skills like how to use the lowest possible dose of narcan in order to reduce withdrawal symptoms, how to simultaneously manage bystanders or cops while reversing an overdose and providing care, learning overdose care for non-opioid overdoses and polysubstance overdoses (overamping, tranq, etc), and learning first aid (CPR and rescue breathing.)

building a political understanding of harm reduction and drug user liberation. Saving Our Own Lives by Shira Hassan is my number one book recommendation for learning about liberatory harm reduction. learn from drug user's unions. learn from sex worker organizations. Harm reduction at work is a guide to think through dynamics that often come up in orgs where there are both drug users and people who don't use drugs involved in the organization. learn about racism and the war on drugs. scalawag magazine has a lot of incredible contemporary news coverage about the war on drugs and policing--their "race and place" column is a must-read.

building emotional and social skills for doing harm reduction outreach. project LETS has a lot of useful trainings on building skills around peer support, altered states, and anti-carceral suicide support. practice different types of intrapersonal skills that help you create an environment of unconditional positive regard that has a deep-rooted respect for autonomy.

figure out what mode of outreach and distro makes the most sense for your context. if you're in a city, are there regular events it makes sense to table at? are there parks or city blocks in front of chill occupants who aren't going to call the cops on you for setting up on the street? does it make sense to be doing mobile outreach? deliveries? mailing supplies only? educational events? start small with whatever mode of outreach is actually possible. it's okay if that's only an event once a month, only making a few deliveries a month, or only focusing on one category of supplies--starting with what's manageable and scaling up is so much better than trying to do everything all at once.

figuring out the biggest harm reduction needs in your community. what are trends in the drug supply? (this info is often collected by harm reductionists with drug checking programs who are using FTIR technology). what are common drugs of choice in your community? What do overdose rates look like in your community? what do rates of HIV, Hep B/C, and other health concerns like tranq wounds look like in your community? what patterns of criminalization, surveillance, and incarceration are showing up in your community? what neighborhoods and areas have communities of drug users living there?

where to source supplies: NASEN and Smoke works both have grant programs for grassroots harm reduction collectives and options for underground groups. remedy alliance also does a lot of sourcing for grassroots groups. if you're really just starting out and don't have capacity to deal with grants yet, there are a lot of medical supply stores online (or even retail marketplaces like amazon) that sell needles that are safe and sterile for human use. you can buy small quantities of smoking supplies at many smoke shops. you can get small quantities of narcan and test strips from resources geared more towards individual supply. and plenty of conventional places to buy other supplies (alcohol wipes, condoms, wound care supplies, etc).

this shit can take a lot of pre-implementation work before you even get to a point where you can start doing outreach, which can feel discouraging, especially when there is so much urgency, so much need, and if you're a person who uses drugs and loves people who use drugs. finding other people to do this work with you--even if they're other people who don't have harm reduction experience and you're learning together--can make this shit feel a lot less demoralizing. reaching out to established orgs and learning from people who have been doing this shit for decades is super useful. bringing your own personal experiences and knowledge from your own life is super useful. understanding that it is going to take a fair amount of time to build community trust, and that even if you're a fellow drug user, there can be new power dynamics to navigate when you start being someone who has the ability to gatekeep lifesaving resources. it is worth moving slowly, building trust, and trying to dismantle hierarchies and power imbalances that show up.