'It doesn't make sense to call addiction a disease and then criminalize people for it. 'Harm reduction offers an alternative approach, grounded in the belief that everyone is worthy of quality care, whether or not they're using drugs.' 📝 Hanna Halperin
ed arrived at my apartment two hours after Jason texted him. I was expecting somebody young, but Ted was an older man, in his 60s or 70s. The van he pulled up in was white and unmarked. He was wearing a red turtleneck sweater, jeans, old sneakers. He had a ponytail. He looked like someone’s off-beat, slightly disheveled great uncle. Everything about him—the van, especially—embarrassed me. He hauled a bag of supplies: rapid blood tests, forms secured on a clipboard, and condoms.
I didn’t know then what harm reduction was, or that Ted was a harm reduction practitioner. Ted was there to help us, but I was too caught up in my own fear to see this. In my mind, Ted was just some guy Jason had saved in his phone, someone who showed up when Jason texted—and because of that, I mistrusted him instantly.
When talking about addiction, people tend to use black and white language, and Jason even used this language to describe himself. But from where I stood, things were never so absolute with him. Harm reduction acknowledges that recovery isn’t black and white; that it rarely happens all at once. It exists on a spectrum and it happens differently for different people.
Then Ted spoke a little about his own recovery. He told us that he had been sober for decades, but it was still one day at time. Working as a harm reduction practitioner was part of his way of staying sober. Serving people who were actively using reminded him, every day, that he did not want to return to the life he once had.
Belgique Dernières Nouvelles, Belgique Actualités
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