As the years go on the drugs themselves are mentioned less while the processes are highlighted more and more. In fact, at a certain strategical level talking about drugs is not the done thing, better to focus on recovery, outcomes, TOPS and payment by results.

Knowledge of drugs, types, effects, etc are seen as secondary to core competencies needed to meet targets and outcomes. The most important thing is to support a client on the road to recovery. But does this exclude 15-25 year olds who are dependent on mephedrone, synthetic cannabinoids and alcohol? Does it exclude users in their early twenties who are developing serious health problems through the use of new and emergent drugs?

There are dependencies developing around new synthetic opioids and benzodiazepines, some users have had their bladders removed or reconstructed because of heavy ketamine use – recovery does not register here, it’s a million miles away. Give them a few more years then they’ll be ready. The problem being they may not be alive in a few more years. Depressing isn’t it?

We tend to focus on treatment, criminality and interventions before we look at drugs and our emotional responses to them. We only ask people what drugs they are on without necessarily breaking the drugs down, without looking at patterns of use, how they effect the brain and behaviour in certain environments. We present drug information in bite size chunks which highlight appearance, effects and classification. Prevalence is what we’re generally looking for and by the way drug use is coming down, right?

Effective treatment must come from the bottom up and not the other way round. An addiction may be an addiction but a drug is not a drug. Treatment needs to be tailored to the service user walking through the door. This means that treatment needs to be tailored to the specific drugs that the service user might be taking. Stating the obvious? Maybe. But then why do you see cannabis users going through the same processes and sitting on the same groups as crack and heroin users? Why are service users being huddled together at different points of recovery, each with their own story centred around the drugs they used?

Is it because an addiction is an addiction or is it because a cost is a cost?

The conference will also see the launch of a new collaboration – City Health International – which will provide continuing opportunity for discussion and debate concerning health behaviours and policy responses in the urban context.

For more information and to register visit http://cityhealth.org.uk/

We don’t have access to their thoughts and we don’t have access to our own thoughts. If we really had privilege access to our own thoughts we would no longer have to express our feelings to somebody else. We would see them within us. We cannot. So how can other people see our thoughts?

Does the mind exist?

Of course the mind exists. It’s a biological entity generated by your brain. Brains make minds. But is the mind an internal space that we have privilege access to?

Seeing the mind in this manner is an illusion created by language. Language gives the impression that something is going on underneath. As if there is a hidden consciousness and with the right tools we can dig in.

Words follow grammatical rules and these rules, or usage of words give the impression that there is a non-material mind.

There is no inner space that we can ‘see’ through introspection. Introspection isn’t like a sixth sense that we can turn inwards to discover hidden processes of the mind. When we really inquire all we see are pictures and images.

We express our emotions through behaviour, speech, the written word or images. We tell a story. We love telling stories. We can also keep our emotions in or lie about what we are really feeling. But if we keep our thoughts or feelings to ourselves, this does not mean that we keep them hidden somewhere, we simply do not express them.

Someone has issues at home and goes to see their psychiatrist to talk about their problems. The psychiatrist states that they are depressed and prescribes them medication. They feel good then go home and the problems are still there. Practical problems that need to be addressed.

Therapy isn’t just talk, but also action.

It is as if therapists deal solely with peoples emotions, anxieties and stresses. As if this kind of support deals with half a person.

But half a person does not exist.

Minds and behaviour are identical.

It is easy to think that we can explain things by cognitive processes, instincts or mental mechanisms. All these notions tend to make the problem subservient to the theory, as the theorist tends to see the problem through the spectacles of their theory.

Mental processes cannot be given as fact.

We cannot observe our inner states because this involves circularity. For instance, to observe your desires, you must know what they already are in order to observe them and how can you be sure that observing them does not alter them?

One cannot speak of a personality, internal to the individual, that is independent of the environment. Neither can one focus on behaviour as being an automatic response to an objective set of environmental stimuli.

Personality and therefore behaviour are always changeable. Change the way the person thinks, or change the environment the person is responding to, and behaviour will change.

We cannot see the community or culture that the individual lives in. We cannot see a social structure, or the cultural aspect of somebody’s lifestyle. But we feel it and live it none-the-less.

3400 BC The opium poppy is cultivated in lower Mesopotamia. The Sumerians would soon pass along the plant and its euphoric effects to the Assyrians. The art of poppy-culling would continue from the Assyrians to the Babylonians who in turn would pass their knowledge onto the Egyptians.

1300 BC In the capital city of Thebes, Egyptians begin cultivation of opium thebaicum, grown in their famous poppy fields. The opium trade flourishes during the reign of Thutmose IV, Akhenaton and King Tutankhamen. The trade route included the Phoenicians and Minoans who move the profitable item across the Mediterranean Sea into Greece, Carthage, and Europe.

1100 BC On the island of Cyprus, the “Peoples of the Sea” craft surgical-quality culling knives to harvest opium, which they would cultivate, trade and smoke before the fall of Troy.

460 BC Hippocrates, “the father of medicine”, dismisses the magical attributes of opium but acknowledges its usefulness as a narcotic and styptic in treating internal diseases, diseases of women and epidemics.

330 BC Alexander the Great introduces opium to the people of Persia and India.

300 BC Opium is used by Arabs, Greeks, and the Romans as a sedative and soporific.

400 AD Opium from the Egyptian fields at Thebes, is first introduced to China by Arab traders.

1300’s Opium disappears for two hundred years from European historical record. Opium had become a taboo subject for those in circles of learning during the Holy Inquisition. In the eyes of the Inquisition, anything from the East was linked to the Devil.

1527 During the height of the Reformation, opium is reintroduced into European medical literature by Paracelsus as laudanum. These black pills or “Stones of Immortality” were made of opium thebaicum, citrus juice and quintessence of gold and prescribed as painkillers.

1606 Ships chartered by Elizabeth I are instructed to purchase the finest Indian opium and transport it back to England.

1680 English apothecary, Thomas Sydenham, introduces Sydenham’s Laudanum, a compound of opium, sherry wine and herbs. His pills along with others of the time become popular remedies for numerous ailments.

1689 Use of tobacco-opium mixtures (madak) begins in the East Indies (probably Java) spreads to Formosa, Fukien and the South China coast.

1700’s The Dutch export shipments of Indian opium to China and the islands of Southeast Asia; the Dutch introduce the practice of smoking opium in a tobacco pipe to the Chinese. Use of hashish, alcohol, and opium spreads among the population of occupied Constantinople

1729 Chinese emperor, Yung Cheng, issues an edict prohibiting the smoking of opium and its domestic sale, except under license for use as medicine.

1750 The British East India Company assumes control of Bengal and Bihar, opium-growing districts of India. British shipping dominates the opium trade out of Calcutta to China.

1753 Linnaeus, the father of botany, first classifies the poppy, Papaver somniferum – ‘sleep-inducing’, in his book Genera Plantarum.

1767 Opium from Bengal continues to enter China despite the edict of 1729 prohibiting smoking. The British East India Company’s import of opium to China increases in frequency from 200 chests annually in 1729 to a staggering two thousand chests of opium per year. Tariffs are collected on the opium.

1779 First mention of actual opium trading in opium at Canton, China.

1780 British traders establish an opium depot at Macao. Another Imperial edict prohibits consumption of opium and reiterates prohibition of its sale.

1787 Trade in opium is still less important than trade in commodities; directors of the East India Company, recognizing China’s objections to the importation of opium, make offers to prohibit the export of Indian opium to China. However, company representatives in Canton declare that the Chinese are never sincere in their declared intentions of suppressing illicit traffic, as long as the officials issue prohibitory edicts with one hand and extend the other to receive bribes from the illegal trade.

1793 The British East India Company establishes a total monopoly on the opium trade. All poppy growers in India were forbidden to sell opium to competitor trading companies.

1799 The 1799 edict increases traffic through Macao and other areas beyond government control enabling unprecedented growth. The British declare only their legitimate cargo, leave opium on board to be picked up by Chinese merchants who smuggle it ashore in small, fast boats. China’s emperor, Kia King, bans opium completely, making trade and poppy cultivation illegal. A strong edict by authorities at Canton, supporting the emperor’s decree of 1796, forbids opium trade at that port. A concurrent drive against native poppy growing is initiated. Opium becomes an illicit commodity.

1800 The British Levant Company purchases nearly half of all of the opium coming out of Smyrna, Turkey strictly for importation to Europe and the United States. Opium becomes identified with official corruption, criminals and antigovernment secret societies. An edict prohibits domestic cultivation and repeats the prohibition against importing opium. China develops an anti-opium policy, at least on paper. Edicts continue to be issued reiterating prohibitions against importation, sale, and consumption of opium.

1819 Writer John Keats and other English literary personalities (Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-eater) experiment with opium intended for strict recreational use – simply for the high and taken at extended, non-addictive intervals.

1827 E. Merck & Company of Darmstadt, Germany, begins commercial manufacturing of morphine.

1830 The British dependence on opium for medicinal and recreational use reaches an all time high as 22,000 pounds of opium is imported from Turkey and India.

1832 Codeine was extracted from opium.

1839 Opium and its preparations are responsible for more premature deaths than any other chemical agent. Opiates account for 186 of 543 poisonings, including no fewer than 72 among children. Lin Tse-Hsu, imperial Chinese commissioner in charge of suppressing the opium traffic, orders all foreign traders to surrender their opium. In response, the British send expeditionary warships to the coast of China, beginning the First Opium War.

1841 The Chinese are defeated by the British in the First Opium War. Along with paying a large indemnity, Hong Kong is ceded to the British.

1843 Dr. Alexander Wood of Edinburgh discovers a new technique of administering morphine, injection with a syringe. He finds the effects of morphine on his patients instantaneous and three times more potent.

1852 The British arrive in lower Burma, importing large quantities of opium from India and selling it through a government-controlled opium monopoly.

1853 The hypodermic needle was invented.

1856 The British and French renew their hostilities against China in the Second Opium War. The importation of opium is now legalized.

1874 English researcher, C.R. Wright first synthesizes heroin, or diacetylmorphine, by boiling morphine over a stove. In San Francisco, smoking opium in the city limits is banned and is confined to neighbouring Chinatowns and their opium dens.

1878 Britain passes the Opium Act with hopes of reducing opium consumption. Under the new regulation, the selling of opium is restricted to registered Chinese opium smokers and Indian opium eaters while the Burmese are strictly prohibited from smoking opium.

1890 U.S. Congress, in its earliest law-enforcement legislation on narcotics, imposes a tax on opium and morphine. Tabloids owned by William Randolph Hearst publish stories of white women being seduced by Chinese men and their opium to invoke fear of the ‘Yellow Peril’, disguised as an “anti-drug” campaign.

1898 The Bayer Company introduce heroin as a substitute for morphine.

Early 1900’s The Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, forming the Food and Drug Administration and giving it power to regulate foods and drugs, and requiring labelling of contents on foods and drugs.

The philanthropic Saint James Society in the U.S. mounts a campaign to supply free samples of heroin through the mail to morphine addicts who are trying give up their habits.

1902 In various medical journals, physicians discuss the side effects of using heroin as a morphine step-down cure. Several physicians would argue that their patients suffered from heroin withdrawal symptoms equal to morphine addiction.

1909 The first federal drug prohibition passes in the U.S. outlawing the importation of opium. It was passed in preparation for the Shanghai Conference, at which the US presses for legislation aimed at suppressing the sale of opium to China.

5,000 cocaine and heroin related deaths are reported by the U.S. government. To prolong the opium trade Britain forces the U.S.A. to put cocaine along with opium on the international drugs agenda.

Cocaine and heroin sales are restricted under the Harrison Act in the U.S.A. the Act requires doctors, pharmacists and others who prescribed narcotics to register and pay a tax. Start of 1^st world war. Cocaine given to British troops in the form of ‘Forced March Tablets’.

The Defence of the Realm Act introduced which makes it illegal for cocaine and morphine to be sold to British Armed Forces.

1923 The U.S. Treasury Department’s Narcotics Division (the first federal drug agency) bans all legal narcotics sales. With the prohibition of legal venues to purchase heroin, addicts are forced to buy from illegal street dealers.

1924 The Heroin Act made manufacture and possession of heroin illegal.

1925 In the wake of the first federal ban on opium, a thriving black market opens up in New York’s Chinatown.

Early 1930’s Japan is worlds leading cocaine producer, followed by the U.S.A., Germany, Great Britain and then France. China recovering from the British opium trade now has to endure Japan flooding the market with cocaine.

1940’s During World War II, opium trade routes are blocked and the flow of opium from India and Persia is cut off. Fearful of losing their opium monopoly, the French encourage Hmong farmers to expand their opium production.

1945 Burma gains its independence from Britain at the end of World War II. Opium cultivation and trade flourishes in the Shan states.

1960’s Again regaining popularity with the drug revolution of the 60’s era. Media yet again play down its dependent qualities as in the late 1800’s. The importation of cocaine to the US is starting to be controlled by the Cuban’s. Burma outlaws opium.

Early 1970’s Involvement in Vietnam is blamed for the surge in illegal heroin being smuggled into the States. To aid U.S. allies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sets up a charter airline, Air America, to transport raw opium from Burma and Laos. Some of the opium would be transported to Marseille by Corsican gangsters to be refined into heroin and shipped to the U.S via the French connection. The number of heroin addicts in the U.S. reaches an estimated 750,000.

1973 President Nixon creates the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) under the Justice Dept. to consolidate virtually all federal powers of drug enforcement in a single agency.

Mid 1970’s Saigon falls. The heroin epidemic subsides. The search for a new source of raw opium yields Mexico’s Sierra Madre. “Mexican Mud” would temporarily replace “China White” heroin until 1978.

1982 Comedian John Belushi dies of a heroin-cocaine- “speedball” overdose.

1984 U.S. State Department officials conclude, after more than a decade of crop substitution programs for Third World growers of marijuana, coca or opium poppies that the tactic cannot work without eradication of the plants and criminal enforcement.

1992 Colombia’s drug lords are said to be introducing a high-grade form of heroin into the United States.

Twenty-three-year-old actor River Phoenix dies of a heroin-cocaine overdose, the same “speedball” combination that killed comedian John Belushi.

The Golden Triangle region of Southeast Asia is now the leader in opium production, yielding 2,500 tons annually. According to U.S. drug experts, there are new drug trafficking routes from Burma through Laos, to southern China, Cambodia and Vietnam.

2004 Opium and heroin production increases in Afghanistan. Afghanistan the main supplier of heroin to the UK street market.

2010 Heroin drought hits the UK. Heroin being cut with benzodiazepines. Opium crop failures in Afghanistan in 2010 may have led to heroin shortages in the UK, the United Nations says.

2012 In its report, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says plant disease, which wiped out almost half of the crop in 2010, appears to have affected illicit heroin markets elsewhere in the world. A fresh blight is poised to hit Afghanistan’s poppy fields this year.

Every Little Thing You Think

Ever catch yourself thinking “Oh I’m an idiot,” and laughing at a silly mistake? Probably harmless for most people. You don’t actually believe that thought.

But sometimes we get carried away with our thoughts. And every little one can sometimes add up to a big “bad thought debt” you carry around with you.

There’s some science behind this. A field in psychology called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT for short. If you can “catch” bad thoughts as they happen, you can re-train your brain and defeat all sorts of issues like depression, anxiety, ocd, etc.

An iPhone app (also available for Android) called CBTReferee lets you write down each thought, categorize it, and write the rebuttal thought. “oh I’m an idiot” becomes “oh I made a small mistake” and it’s amazing how much better that rebuttal thought makes you feel over time.

By Andrew Arrow

At around 11am Adolf Hitler decided to get out of bed. Boy, he felt exhausted and needed a good clear out. Moments later he would emerge from the toilet, knackered.

One of Hitler’s mates, a philosopher, had stayed over on the couch. On waking he told Hitler of a dream he was having, where the dog, Hitler’s dog, was talking to him about the underlying principles of National Socialism. Hitler was intrigued. Could his dog really think?

After an exhaustive discussion with the philosopher Hitler called up his personal physician. Where the hell was he? There was no time to waste. Hitler had a country to run and his people were fighting a war. The physician would turn up, always late, and would follow Hitler around for the rest of the day with a syringe or two of methamphetamine.

Back in the days of the Weimar Republic when hallucinogens were cool, a book dealer from Vienna introduced Hitler to a psychedelic drug containing mescaline. While on the stuff Hitler believed he could tap into deep supernatural powers and became a firm believer of racist conspiracies.

Hitler was an avid collector of ‘Ostara’, a magazine filled with occultist teachings. At the time he was fascinated by a story he had read. It was about two pharmacists who had apparently invented a drug while working for Merck a few years earlier. They’d gone to Africa to record the sound of tribal drumming which they eventually hooked up to two gramophones back home in Germany. Rudolf Hess had shown him pictures of the wild parties, of German men and women hugging and kissing, pulling all sorts of funny faces and jumping over fires completely naked with antlers tied to their heads.

In 1942, at the height of Hitler’s combat, Dr Heinz Fischer an expert on infrared radiation led his drug-induced posse of hardcore technicians on a secret expedition to the Baltic island of Rugen. Hitler thought something dodgy was going on up there. The men aimed a powerful camera loaded with infrared film into the sky at a forty-five degree angle.

Their objective was to take a picture of the British fleet advancing across the hollow interior of the concaved earth. Hitler sent over one of his best panzer divisions to check it out. So what if it weakened the Eastern Front, he thought, and so what if the British knew his men were into smack, speed and weird paganism…

Farmagene 2012

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Methoxetamine is a derivative of ketamine. Allegedly, it was designed in 2008 for grey market distribution by M., an underground chemist, who singlehandedly produced the new dissociative anesthetic. Usually found in white or off white crystalline powder form, it can also come as a pellet. Cost before the temporary ban was approx £18 per gram although it was sold in smaller amounts at a reduced price.

Methoxetamine was marketed as “bladder friendly”, referring to the bladder damage associated with heavy ketamine use. To date this is not known and further scientific research is required to determine whether this is the case. With regards to toxicity, or damage to vital organs and the brain, again little is known. If MXE it is like ketamine it will have stimulant effects in smaller quantities and more hallucinatory and sedative effects at larger doses, though MXE may be more potent and longer lasting than ketamine.

In March 2012, the Home Office referred methoxetamine to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for possible temporary controlling. The ACMD gave their advice on March 23, with the chair commenting that “the evidence shows that the use of methoxetamine can cause harm to users and the ACMD advises that it should be subject to a temporary class drug order.”

An in-depth literature review was published in March 2012 which looked at scientific literature and information on the web relating to methoxetamine. The report concluded that “the online availability of information on novel psychoactive drugs, such as methoxetamine, may constitute a pressing public health challenge. Better international collaboration levels and novel forms of intervention are necessary to tackle this fast-growing phenomenon.”

At present, drug services working with young adults in the UK are seeing mephedrone, cannabis and alcohol rather than methoxetamine. Methoxetamine took a foothold with ketamine users and failed to have the overarching popularity of mephedrone. However, it does demonstrate how new drugs, new technologies and savvy entrepreneurs can efficiently distribute drugs to those who want them very quickly.

Mephedrone, also known as 4-methylmethcathinone (4-MMC), or 4-methylephedrone, is a synthetic stimulant drug of the cathinone classes and in its purer form has the potency of amphetamine. Slang names include meph, drone, and MCAT. It is chemically similar to the cathinone compounds found in the khat plant of eastern Africa. It comes in the form of tablets or a powder, which users can swallow, snort or inject and producing similar effects to amphetamines.

As well as producing the intended stimulant effects, negative side effects occur when mephedrone is used, with teeth grinding and sores to noses and throats due to snorting the drug, the most common. Nothing is known about the potential neurotoxicity of mephedrone, but scientists have suggested possible dangers associated with its use based on its similarity to other drugs. There have been reported deaths from consuming mephedrone, but some deaths that the media attributed to the drug were later determined to have been caused by other factors.

Pre-ban mephedrone was considered purer, initially having a strong ‘fishy’ solvent smell moving later to a crystal-like appearance with less of an odour. Post-ban mephedrone is normally adulterated, possibly cut with 4-Methylethcathinone (4-MEC) and other substances and the cost has risen from £10 to £20/£25 per gram. Also damp and badly produced batches have surfaced post-ban, sometimes of purer quality and may be an indication that it might be locally synthesised.

Pure mephedrone is much harder to come by and consumers are becoming disillusioned by online vendors promoting the next research chemical to be ‘Just Like Your Old Favourite!” When in reality it is not.

Hum London wishes to set up and run an independently funded addiction recovery centre that is based upon the theory of providing an enriched human environment and that utilises the three primary arts as the vehicle to increase BDNF in the brain to help break the cycle of addiction. The idea behind Hum is simple. “To support people to stop using drugs or alcohol through music, art, drama and practical human interventions.”

However, Hum is not just ‘art therapy’. It is novel in combining current ideas in neurology with the Arts and humanistic philosophy. With this it stands out as an alternative to many recovery-orientated services within the drug field where ‘art therapy’ is an add-on and not central to service philosophy or core principles.

The primary focus of Hum will be placed upon music, art, drama and the environment that this occurs in. Hum will work with individuals, communities and other organisations in the spirit of true cooperation and sharing. The belief is that with the sharing of knowledge comes a better understanding and development of effective services and approaches.

If you would like further information please visit Hum London