thoughts on CSSDP Confernce

The weekend sure had it ups and downs for me but overall it was fantastic. I finally was among like minded people and wasn’t feeling like I needed to lie about anything like I normally do. I certainly felt much more able to “come out of the closet” not just as a person who uses drugs but also a person with a serious and persistent mental health problem.

Yesterday was one of the hardest days I have had with my anxiety in a long time. I was able to go to a conference on Concurrent Disorders in May that was three days with little problem but this conference shock me. The I feel was due to the negative past run in with a member of the CSSDP that was there along with having speakers that I really wanted to impress. I don’t really care about the opinions of the people at the conferences for mental health and addiction but this conference, these people have been my idols for years and I really wanted to impress them.

What Rick Doblin said in his talk spoke to me and he actually mentioned brain scans and having scans of people who use drugs with holes in their brain. Well, I of course did not and I knew he would be intrigued by this.

Dr. Gabor Mate spoke of addiction and its causes which are two things and it isn’t the drug ever otherwise everyone who used it would become addicted and this doesn’t happen. Finally, someone is speaking my language although people would likely assume I am speaking his but I knew this watching friends use while others abused and my friends tended to be from all over the place rather then just one group. I even once met a intern doctor at St. Paul's coming down from mushrooms on the yaletown walk while I was smoking a joint. She worked the next day. We are all drugs users and that was repeated over and over at the conference. Drug use is not addiction.

The conflict that I had with the member in the group specifically said that I couldn't say that as firstly his friends who smoke pot wouldn't think of themselves as drug users. Well, they are...

Addicts have lost two things: belonging and connection. Belonging is having a purposeful and healthy life that contribute to society, family and self. The other is spirituality in the sense that we are all connected and therefore, not every truly alone yet for addicts, they are alone and the pain is unimaginable and that is what drugs or activities provide is a “chemical” feeling of belonging or connection rather then one that is creating by being a healthy environment.

The morning talk of Drugs & Healing that included the panelists, Rick Doblin, Dr. Gabor Mate, Phillipe Lucas, & Kenneth Tupper. They spoke of Ayauasca being a medicine that helps people face the demons in their past to allow them to move beyond being frozen in time due to the trauma. There will be research using this medicine to help aboriginal women on the DTES recover from the excessive trauma they have experienced.
It was so refreshing that I am not the only one who is realizing these facts about addiction and neuroscience.

Rick Doblin invited me to write about my MDMA experiences when using it for my treatment of PTSD and how it saved my life. I am trying to arrange to be in his study here in Vancouver for using MDMA for PTSD along with a friend of mine. You know who you are, I won't say any names. I was serious, girl when I said I would get you in! Plus, I want to do it to and I could only do this with you. We also need to find two men that we trust to do it with us.

I did talk to Rick but not Dr. Gabor Mate about my brain scans. The scans he mentioned were Dr. Amen’s and he said Dr. Amen wasn’t scientific as it was purely for business. I couldn’t argue with that however, on the same note, you can’t blow it off entirely as just being about profit. Dr. Amen puts the context of your scans into your life with a three hour history that goes through it all. I also did indicate that I saw Dr. Amen and that even he admitted that he couldn’t prove that the scans weren’t like that before the drugs and the drugs were an attempt to try to fill in those holes. I think Dr. Amen was doing it more for political reasons rather then due to believing it as they never pressured me to stop the drugs.

In fact, they understood why I continue to use them even after being put on all the supplements. Yes, I still use drugs. OMG and no I am not an addict and never have been aside from tobacco for 20 years which I quit almost 3 years ago now. He did say he was happy to hear they had helped me. It was really interesting to hear this point of view as I tend to be so scientific. I knew it was profit for the AMEN clinics but some people really are in it to help others while being placed into a capitalistic world. We need money to survive and he is still subject to the pressures of the profit medical model in the USA. I still think regardless of the profit factor of Dr. Amen and his drug scans, he has generally helped people.

The second awesome thing was talking to Dr. Gabor Mate. I did ask him about potentially providing support with my self help guide that I wrote and sent to Vancouver Coastal Health both for helping clients and maybe even educating the staff. He said not right now but send me an email in April after he writes his book and he can potentially be interested. This is something.

In the afternoon, it was just Dr. Mate with only about 15 other people, it was really an honor. He got to the heart of everything so naturally without even having to “think” about it and it was like being in the presence of “god”. I even thought during his presentation “Buddha is in front of me.” It was incredible. He even quoted from Understanding the Mind which is written by Thich Nhat Hanh. He also wrote the book I read time to time when I need gentle reminders of how to just be - Buddha Mind, Buddha Body.

I know some friends on facebook still believe that drugs cause addiction, please understand it isn’t true. Stress damages the brain causing it to seek tools to help itself albeit sometimes misguided. We are just animals and they too use drugs and abuse them and even become addicted but this is only under stress. Prohibition increases this stress!!

Cocaine isn’t addictive, heroin isn’t either but the person who uses them might have a vulnerability to having a particular type of reaction to the use of usually certain types of drugs (some prefer stimulants, others depressants) or activity (gambling, sex, internet, TV) due to past experiences (childhood) resulting in developmental damage (structural, chemical and more changes to the brain) resulting in the reaction of feeling love and belonging that had been missing in their lives up until that moment.

Please believe me, it isn’t ever the drug. Happy people who use heroin and cocaine will not become addicted.

Others I talked to Dana Larsen whom I overheard talking about coca leaves and how nutritious they were (that was such a satisfaction as I wish I could grow them as I need both stimulation and better nutrition - medicinal coca - how is that so different then medicinal marijuana). I talked to Tara Lyons, Gillian Maxwell, Warren Michelow, Phillipe Lucas, Caleb Chepesiuk, Ann Livingstone, Marliss Taylor, Nathan Seckinger and the former Drug Policy Coordinator in Vancouver, Donald MacPherson and Deb Harper.

I missed Kirk Tousaw, Mark Haden, Libby Davies, Rielle Capler, Evan Wood, Judith Grant, and I think that is it. I said Hi to David Malmo-Levine but by that time I was unable to talk which was really disappointing as we both have a very big interest in the decriminalization of drug use in Portugal, how it has been implemented and the effects it might have on drug users who don't abuse or have any potential of developing addiction due to not having any vulnerability.

This was much longer then intended but I type so fast and think faster so...it usually is inevitable. If I try to edit, it just gets longer. I have way to many words floating around in my head all the time. You can by the way become addicted to meditation as the drug or activity doesn't matter, it is the person. This is what Dr. Gabor Mate as everyone kept asking about the stereotypical things like withdrawal. He as I always have said you can't equate physical dependence to addiction as they aren't the same things. Physical withdrawal is not what makes people keep using drugs, it is just a fact of pharmacology and how drugs react to our chemical bodies. We adapt to its presence and this isn't indicative of an addiction problem.

We do not need decriminalization of marijuana we need legalized, regulated and controlled distribution, production of all psychoactive drugs and support for those who use psychoactive drugs, abuse them and are addicted to them.

We need to end Prohibition as forcing people to not do something doesn’t work.