Health & Wellbeing

Highlights from an assessment of the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of drug treatment services provided by Turning Point Treatment Centre, Saint Lucia

Highlights from an assessment of the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of drug treatment services provided by Turning Point Treatment Centre, Saint Lucia Conducted for PAHO Researched and written by Marcus Day 1 December 2020 Executive Summary A review of Turning Point Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centres observance

The Hole That Needs Filling: Cannabis as Chronic Maintenance in an Era of Failed Abstinence

Abstract After thirty years of ethnographic fieldwork, clinical observation, and hundreds of structured interviews with people who smoke crack cocaine in the Caribbean, I have concluded that the addiction treatment industry and the international drug control system that supports it, is built on a foundational lie: the assumption that abstinence

The Hidden Toll: Understanding Health Disparities in Vulnerable Populations

In any society, the health of a nation is not measured solely by the medical breakthroughs of its top hospitals, but by the well-being of its most at-risk citizens. Across the globe, a stark reality persists: people living in poverty or lacking access to socialized or affordable healthcare are significantly

Harm Reduction, Chemsex and Gay Men

Harm Reduction, Chemsex and Gay Men: Addressing the Gaps Marcus Day / David Stuart Despite growing overdose deaths and rising HIV incidence among gay and bisexual men, the broader gay community has largely overlooked the role that illicit drugs. primarily synthetic stimulants consumed orally, intranasally, or anally, but rarely injected,

Kava – muscle relaxant and analgesic

For people suffering from chronic pain kava is a natural option providing rapid relief without short or long term side effects. The biggest challenge lies in the method of preparation. In the UK, thousands of miles from the farms of Melanesia, fresh kava root is very hard to get hold

Coca revisited

In July 2024 the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence began a ‘Critical review of the coca leaf’. This is to establish with as much clarity as possible the medical harms caused by consuming coca leaf in its natural form, and products made therefrom, like teas or powders. A

Iboga – update

Underground treatment opportunities are available in the UK and Europe but come at risk to patient and healers, as the case of Sarah Glatt illustrates. A therapist who reported to have helped hundreds of people struggling with problematic habits, she was arrested in Norway in response to an international arrest

Sharing cannabis for health and wellness – patients no more

The repression of cannabis and cannabis related medications has left patients to medicate themselves, and with time, to look after one another. The interesting thing is that the very fragmentation to the development of medicines has opened possibilities for experimentation with different strains and mixes, so that medicines can be