The young women are part of Rogue Valley Harm Reduction, a group devoted to reducing those dangers, and if you would like a clue about how we got to young women in rural Oregon handing out needles and overdose prevention drugs to local drug users, there is no better place to start than Maia Szalavitz's Undoing Drugs. They also have informational pamphlets about the dangers of various substances and how to reduce those dangers. The women, two volunteers and a paid staffer from the local HIV alliance, come the first Sunday of every month to provide fentanyl test strips, clean syringes, and packages containing the injectable version of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone to local drug users and their friends and family members. Ultimately, Undoing Drugs offers a path forward-revolutionizing not only the treatment of addiction, but also our treatment of behavioral and societal issues.Last Sunday, I drove to the community center of a small town in southwestern Oregon to find a trio of young women seated at a picnic table in the grass outside the building. It is also about how personal, direct human connection and kindness can inspire profound transformation. It illustrates how hard it can be to take on widely accepted conventional wisdom-and what is necessary to overcome this resistance. In a spellbinding narrative rooted in an urgent call to action, Undoing Drugs tells the story of how a small group of committed people changed the world, illuminating the power of a great idea. And it provides a way of understanding behavior and culture that has relevance far beyond drugs. Developed and championed by an outcast group of people who use drugs and by former users and public health geeks, harm reduction offers guidance on how to save lives and improve health. However, it runs counter to much of the received wisdom of our criminal and medical industrial complexes. There is another way, one that is proven to work. In the name of “sending the right message,” we have maximized the spread of infectious disease, torn families apart, incarcerated millions of mostly Black and Brown people-and utterly failed to either prevent addiction or make effective treatment for it widely available. But we have tried to solve this national crisis with policies that only made matters worse.
From “one of the bravest, smartest writers about addiction anywhere” (Johann Hari, New York Times bestselling author)-the untold story of harm reduction, a surprisingly simple idea with enormous powerĭrug overdoses now kill more Americans annually than guns, cars or breast cancer.
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