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As a mental-health consumer with a history of addiction and assorted personal problems in my past, I asked myself what I could do to assist my fellow Metro Club members in coping with some of the various issues apparent in their lives. So I decided to share with my clubhouse peers what I consider to be one of the most effective methods. This method consists of principles known as Harm Reduction.
Harm Reduction allows you to improve the quality of your life by reducing the most harmful aspects of your lifestyle, and gradually increasing awareness of your priorities.
The principles are:
First, the user’s decision to use is accepted. We don’t judge other people.
Second, the user is treated with dignity.
Third, the user is expected to take responsibility for his or her own behavior.
Fourth, reduce harm, not consumption. You recover at your own rate. Whatever you do, focus on doing it in a way that causes the least amount of harm within your lifestyle. If you’re an IV drug abuser, we encourage you to use clean needles and to not engage in sexual immorality. If your problem is gambling, we basically encourage you to do whatever you used to do, but make sure to keep a roof over your head; don’t become homeless. If you’re a drug addict, we encourage you to pay your bills, and then if you wanna get high.
You do this gradually. I started taking more care of my priorities. After a while, the drug piece was gone entirely.
Fifth, no predefined outcomes. Don’t go into a Harm Reduction meeting saying, Okay, this week, I’m definitely gonna do this.
Unlike the 12-step recovery methods used by Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous, Harm Reduction does not require total abstinence. If you slip and drink a beer, that’s all. That means you drank a beer. It’s not the end of the world. Nor does relapse mean a total loss of clean time, which requires starting all over again. There’s no hierarchy of people who have clean time and don’t. Everyone is the same.
I learned the Harm Reduction model originally at an agency that was called the Bed-Stuy Resource Center, which is no longer there; it was run by the Brooklyn AIDS Task Force. I had tried Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous, but I was miserable. I just lived my life by running to meetings. Three, four meetings a day. The quality of my life wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Harm Reduction took the pressure off. That was 10 years ago. I’ve been clean for six years.
The first Harm Reduction group held at Metro Club was well received. One participant was a member without a history of drug or alcohol abuse, but he did have problems managing his money. This member informed me that by simply making a small shift in his priorities, as discussed in the group, he immediately experienced a positive outcome.
In closing, Harm Reduction is not a quick fix, and, as with any other method, does require adherence to a few basic principles. But Harm Reduction is less restrictive than most other techniques, and is easier to incorporate into most lifestyles. It takes you longer to recover, but when you do recover, you have a better quality of life while you’re recovering. And as it was given to me, I freely offer this tool to be added to the arsenal of coping methods that we consumers must use daily in order to recover.