3 women from 3 different backgrounds put their family and their drug use together in 3 different ways

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.”

Kira is, in her own words, “a young woman who has been through a lot” but, writing from jail, she tells how she’s re-taking control of her life and shares what she has learned. “For me, the secret to change is to focus all your energy not on looking back fighting the old, but on building the new you,” she says. “Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tiptoe if you like but take the step! It takes courage and resilience to be who you really are in a society that mostly denies your existence.”

3 ways we can reduce instances of sexual based harm, facilitate safe spaces for women at music festivals, and develop a community we are all proud of.

Nerida’s Story — “More importantly, I have come to believe that I have the right and responsibility to keep myself safe and healthy, and make my own decisions. I am owning my own body and veins.”

Chantell’s Story — I was a sex worker in Darlinghurst for many years. The police, treating us all as criminals, pushed us further and further away from the new posh residential developments, but no matter where we worked we kept our identity as a community, supporting each other. We really had each other’s backs then

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.

Jack’s friend became mentally unwell and he desperately wanted to help but unfortunately, he started to burn out. Jack talks about what you can do to support a friend, and how to set healthier boundaries.

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.

A number of things come up for users at this time of year: organising pharmacotherapy doses and inter-state transfers; wondering if your dealer is going to be working on Christmas Day; sorting out injecting equipment when NSP hours change over Christmas as staff have a well-earned break! ...But for many of us, there is no break from being a user. And the holiday period brings additional health issues for users, particularly overdose prevention and bloodborne virus awareness.

These are 2 of the letters to Users News has received from incarcerated peers. Miranda writes to us about getting cured of hep-C and overcoming past trauma. Bill says “Thank God for Buvidal!” because using in jail can be really stressful.

“We’ve lost too much mob!” is the theme of 3 posters about opioid overdose that NUAA has released that have Indigenous communities as their target audience. They are stunning to look at, thanks to artwork by Aboriginal artist Steve Morgan.

Kids, especially the younger ones, love to test how random things they discover taste! NUAA has published 2 posters: the first raising awareness on storing meds where children are not likely to find them and the other educating on how to recognise the signs of opioid overdose in kids.

Maali wrote to UN and asked: “I am worried about using methadone as I get older because there are no obviously older people at my clinics. I am looking for my elders and I can’t see them. Where are the people in their 70s, 80s and 90s?”

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.