Drink and Drugs News February 2017 DDN February 2017 | Page 10

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Please email the editor , claire @ cjwellings . com , or post them to DDN , cJ wellings ltd , 57 High street , Ashford , Kent tN24 8sG . letters may be edited for space or clarity .

Bookshelf

Recommended reading – from the drug and alcohol sector

‘ I am not suggesting that aiming for recovery is wrong ... [ but ] for all the talk of recovery , the evidence suggests that we are not very good at making it happen .

Off the mark ?
I am sure you know the story of The Emperor ’ s New Clothes . Two weavers promise him a new suit that they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions , stupid , or incompetent . When he parades before his subjects in his new clothes , no one dares to say that they don ’ t see any suit of clothes on him for fear that this is how they will be seen .
Arguably this is how the treatment field has been treating recovery . Because commissioners say they want it , guidance says we should do it and everybody else says how they great they are at it , we feel we must go along for fear of being described as ‘ unfit for our positions , stupid , or incompetent ’.
We can talk about recovery but we can ’ t hide from the facts , namely :
1 . The NDTMS website shows the current recovery rate for opiate users is 6.6 per cent – a drop from 8.59 per cent in 2011 / 12 . For all service users the rate is 38.24 per cent , a rise since 2011 / 12 of just 3.52 per cent .
2 . Drug-related deaths have risen and continue to rise . They are at their highest point since data was first collected in 1993 .
I am not suggesting that aiming for recovery is wrong . I am not trying to make an argument that harm reduction is somehow better than the focus on recovery . All I am saying is that for all the talk of recovery , the evidence suggests that we are not very good at making it happen .
This isn ’ t just a provider issue . Commissioners have been commissioning ‘ recovery focused ’ services for a number of years and yet the recovery rate has dropped . As they have pushed for more recovery , and the providers have responded with plans , initiatives and service models that don ’ t appear to work , drug-related deaths have risen .
If you were in central government and could see that all the investment into the field was achieving an annual recovery rate that was dropping , would you continue to invest ? Perhaps it ’ s time we all had a realistic discussion about what can be achieved before it ’ s too late . Howard King , head of Inclusion
heavy industry
In your article ‘ Industrial strength ’ ( DDN , November 2016 , page 10 ), I was surprised to see so much space detailing the arguments made by mostly alcohol industry and associated bodies at the recent Westminster Social Policy Forum .
Henry Ashworth of the industryfunded Portman Group stated he was disappointed not to see more representation of public health at the event , but looking at the dominance of industry-related bodies on the agenda the reason for this seems rather self apparent . Whilst I was asked to speak at the conference and agreed , I was certainly ambivalent about doing so .
I was given five minutes to speak on a fairly narrow brief , but tried to highlight some of the limitations of a continued focus on ‘ partnerships ’ and ‘ voluntary action ’ without addressing key environmental influences such as price and availability . Whilst I do not wish to see complex policy debates over-simplified or polarised , there is a clear need for caution over how policy debates are framed and influenced by different agendas . James Morris , Alcohol Academy

Sober Stick Figure

By Amber Tozer Published by Blink Publishing ISBN : 9781910536636 £ 9.98 Review by Mark Reid .
AMBER TOZER ’ S STICK FIGURES brilliantly follow the recovery idea of ‘ keep it simple ’. In just a few strokes of her pencil , the childlike pictures are a great way to show addiction for what it is – destructive : drink too much of this and you ’ ll end up on the deck . It helps that Amber ’ s commentary alongside her storyboards is by turns hilarious and caustic .
Many drunks do ‘ geographicals ’, jumping from one place to another trying to find themselves or , more often , to leave themselves behind and shake off the drink . Amber ’ s geographical takes us on a tour of the USA . It starts in her ‘ hometown of Pueblo , a midsize lower-middle-class city in the foothills of Colorado ’. Her mother runs the Do Drop Inn where ‘ men on stools with their elbows on the bar drink one after another ’. Amber always loved the attention they gave her . She then takes her drinking to New York and Los Angeles – a coast-to-coast all-inclusive of high jinks and horror stories .
Amber is spot-on describing untreated alcoholics – low self-esteem but big ego : ‘ compliments made me nervous and when I did accept a compliment , I ’ d let it go to my head . I ’ d fluctuate between feeling worthless or

‘ In just a few strokes of her pencil , the childlike pictures are a great way to show addiction for what it is ...’

like I was better than anyone else – nothing in between ’.
Then , getting drunk , all that mental discomfort disappears and Amber enjoyed ‘ laughing at something I would normally be worried about ’. Amber ‘ loved the manufactured feeling alcohol gave with bad ideas that I thought were 100 per cent great ’.
It is a relief when Amber finally chooses recovery . Stopping is one thing . Staying stopped another . ‘ I was still stuck with the reason I drank in the first place . I drank because I had obsessive negative thinking , and without alcohol I still have negative thoughts ’.
Like fearing the worst . Sober Amber was dog-sitting ‘ a tiny , white , fluffy Bichon poodle named Latte ’. A coyote made off with him , ‘ dangling from its mouth ’. In shock , Amber had two thoughts : ‘ a coyote turned Latte into lunch ’ and ‘ I get to drink over this ’. Then suddenly the poodle bounds back into the garden ‘ tongue poking through his huge smile ’. Amber ’ s ‘ excuse ’ to drink is gone . The stick figure drawing for this is my favourite . ‘ I kicked that coyote ’ s ass ’ says Latte . Somehow he escaped . So has Amber .
Mark Reid is peer worker at Path To Recovery ( P2R ), Bedfordshire
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