Annie’s 10 Top Tips for Stepping Up in the Drug User Movement

Annie Madden is a global drug user activist with living experience of injecting & illicit drug use, hep C and opioid treatment. She was CEO of the Australian Injecting & Illicit Drugs Users League (AIVL) from 2000-2016 and CEO at NUAA from 1996-2000. Annie was awarded an Order of Australia in 2019. She gave UN her Top Ten tips for stepping up in the movement and an interview, which can be read here.

1. Regularly stop for a minute and ask yourself: why am I in this fight? —and it is a fight for our very fucking lives most of the time. The price of being a drug user is so often completely preventable.

2. Look after each other and value each other. There’s not a lot of us, so we need to protect each other, and understand that we will have our ups and downs. I’ve seen too many people walk away hurt from DUOs. Don’t let the War on Drugs dominate how we treat each other.

3. Value your own experience, but don’t get too into yourself. There’s so much out there to learn. I did most of my growing in spaces where you need to be quiet and listen to what other people’s experiences are.

4. We need all sorts of people to make up this movement. We need the quiet administrators behind the scenes as well as the loud activists on the front lines. We need journalists, scientists, educators, carers and face-to-face roles providing harm reduction in NSPs or at festivals for DanceWize.
   There are lots of ways for people to get involved. Sometimes that’s in a paid job, sometimes it is as a volunteer. Think about where you might fit into the movement - let the info in NUAA’s magazines help and/or talk to someone at NUAA (call 02 8354 7300).

5. The drug user movement spends a lot of time arguing about wanting to be at the table. But we don’t spend enough time talking about what we want to achieve when we’re there.
   Dream big; if we don’t think it, then it definitely won’t happen. But we also need to get practical and focus on the little things. Don’t miss opportunities to change the mind of your mum, dad, sister, cousin... They speak to others and it ripples out.
   Sometimes just surviving is a major achievement worth celebrating.

6. Don’t underestimate the power of the movement to change the way people think about drugs. It’s about increments. Hang on to the small wins. Study the global cracks appearing in the wall of prohibition. Have an answer for people who say ‘how do we know ending prohibition won’t be worse?’ Learn the pros and cons of drug policy models.

7. The movement needs more leaders coming through. I worry about the health & sustainability of the movement’s leadership. If you feel you can maybe be a leader, just give it a go.

8. Don’t be afraid to be a lone leader but also learn how to share the load. When you’re part of a choir, you can tap in and out. Try new ways of doing things; set up new leadership team structures.

9. We need to make the most of the synergy between movements. How can we work with anti-colonialism, anti-racism and workers’ rights groups? Never forget that drug policy has a racist basis to it all around the world.

10. Try to have times where you can get away from the war, but also make sure you have an attitude of constantly learning, and finding new people to learn from, at home and overseas. Right now I’m into drug user activist Garth Mullins’ podcast: ‘Crackdown pod’.