The long-awaited NSW Drug Summit has finally taken place, and NUAA (the organisation that publishes Users News) worked hard to make sure that voices of people with lived and living experience of illicit drug use were represented. While we won’t see the government’s final recommendations until early 2025, on December 19 NSW Premier Chris Minns announced a welcome step in the right direction — drug sample testing at festivals.

On 26 September, more than 60 people around the country attended an online event that launched the foundational declaration of Tasmanians with Substance, a collective of people with lived and living experience of using alcohol and other drugs in lutruwita/Tasmania.

This video was produced by Ukrainian drug user organisation VOLNa, for Support Don’t Punish Day 2023. They say: “Every year on June 26, on the day of the Support, Don’t Punish campaign, the All-Ukrainian Association of People with Drug Addiction “VOLNa” throughout Ukraine expresses its protest against the cruel and senseless state policy regarding drugs and people who use drugs. This year is no exception. The war is going on, all the people of Ukraine have united to fight back against the vicious and dangerous enemy - Russia. And when the unification of the people takes place, it is important to remember all the citizens of the country.”

“Can’t get angry though, because one angry blackfella means we’re all angry blackfellas. Yet a handful of incompetent whitefellas means what? The system. I want you to care. I want you to be angry, too. I want you to hate this.”
Hate This, is a powerful piece written by Carissa Lee, a Noongar actor and writer whose work has featured in The Guardian, Junkee, Witness Performance, IndigenousX and The Conversation. We are happy to be able share the piece both as written text and spoken word performed by First Nations actor Angeline Penrith.

A one-women radio play about life after jail. Performed by Jarrah

A poem by one of our readers, Rhosa.

Celia is gently spoken and carries herself with a natural dignity and beauty. She has a lifetime of advocating for others, working in her community to improve conditions and documenting life as an urban Aboriginal. Intelligent, opinionated and creative, she is clearly a natural leader, although her modesty does not allow her to think in those terms. Celia was born and raised on the Block in a loving family, and although she has lived elsewhere from time to time — including giving her children a connection to the bush — she always returns to her community in the Redfern/Waterloo area.

The responsibilities of motherhood changed Pandora’s relationship with drugs. Here she reflects on this and how it has also changed her relationship with herself. “I used to believe that stuff about myself, but I don’t anymore. I know the truth,” she explains. “I know that people who use drugs are people like anyone else and unlike anyone else. We are smart, interesting, creative and uniquely ourselves. We love our families and our friends. We work hard at our jobs. We clean the house and walk the dog. We try to be healthy. We make mistakes. We grow.”

I first sought out an ADHD diagnosis when I was 23, and the psychiatrist told me, “No, actually you just have the learning capacity of a 16-year-old due to your drug addiction.” Yikes. It took me a couple of years to wrestle with that message – to make sure I rejected it on a deep level – before I tried again with another doctor. And boom, I was right: my ADHD scored off the charts. No wonder amphetamines help my brain feel regulated.

When you’re beginning your journey of drug use, it is easy to get a bit overenthusiastic and end up lost, especially when you don’t have any elders around to help guide you. Akshay spent a lot of time worrying that cannabis and LSD had given him drug-induced anxiety, depersonalisation and psychosis, but he eventually realised that the people who were trying to help him held some negative attitudes towards drugs, and he needed a more supportive — and experienced — community around him.

At Users News we often hear stories about people facing stigma when accessing OTP services. However, there’s always somewhere worse, and if the issue is stigmatisation of people who use drugs, that somewhere is often the USA. American harm reduction activist Danielle Russell was in Australia last year and was with a friend when they were picking up their methadone. She was totally blown away by the fact that her Australian friend was treated like a human. She wrote this article for Filter magazine when she returned to the US.

Kate is a proud Aboriginal woman who has a history of injecting heroin. She wants to share her unique experience of clearing hep C twice, nearly 2 decades apart. Her first treatment was in prison in the early 2000s, with Interferon. Soon after she got out of prison, she got hep C again and didn’t get treated until 2019. Getting treated a second time has been life changing for her and she now supports peers with hep C and drug use.

Pat is a gay Aboriginal man with bipolar. He shares what it’s like to get caught with drugs and then be noticed by police for the rest of his life.

Our handy new table lists the penalties you could get in NSW for possessing different quantities of the most common drugs.

There is not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to Opioid Treatment Programs (OTP). Which OTP medication is most beneficial will be different for different people. One of the newer OTP medications is Long Acting Injectable Buprenorphine (LAIB), also called “depot bupe”. Two brands — Buvidal and Sublocade — were approved by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration in April 2020.

Kiaran told Users News about how depot bupe has benefitted him but might not be best OTP medication for everyone.

Peers On Wheels (POW) is a new pilot project NUAA has launched. The project delivers mobile peer-led testing and treatment services for hepatitis C (hep C). POW is friendly, confidential, quick and easy. POW is visiting a bunch of places in NSW over the coming months. To help spread the word to peers, we interviewed MJ, the project’s Coordinator. 

'For 20 years my life has revolved around that overdose.'

Most of society doesn’t realise this stuff happens. Shane is a peer worker who lives and breathes NUAA’s mission to advance the health, rights and dignity of people who use drugs. Unfortunately, Shane is regularly stopped by police and his healthy fear of police means he can barely breathe around them — which makes him look even more suspicious.

Katrina is a peer distributor for NUAA in a small rural town in NSW. She’s known she’s had hep C for 6 years but has found it hard to get treated because of the lack of services in her area and past experiences of stigma within a health care setting.

Drug and Alcohol Multicultural Education Centre (DAMEC) held focus groups to give a voice to people living in Western Sydney, who are from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and who use drugs, around their experience of incarceration.