In Porto, in a social housing neighborhood, in an abandoned building that is occupied by around 12 people and it is a place used by many people just to go there and smoke or inject outside of normalizing looks…
Unfortunately the week before on the 14th a person died there, alone, surrounded by garbage, needle still in the arm…
As it is one of the places where we’ve been developing a project trying to have 2 Peers from CASO at least two days peer week, since the beginning of March, it seemed the adequate and right place and moment to develop this action.
Over Summer, 2018, there were 3 big campaigns for our community - in June there was Support. Don’t Punish, in July there was International Remembrance Day and in August there was International Overdose Awareness Day. Here is Janko Belins round up of what some of the EuroNPUD grant winners did for Support Dont Punish, this June.
When we witness someone else really 'get it' when it comes to the work we are doing and how important and useful our community can be in that process, it is a great moment to see. In this context, on the frontline of drugs, drug use and drug users, people can and do have 'lightbulb' moments, epiphany's and revelations. Much of it occurs due to people having the opportunity to share a bit of their lives with each other, communicating openly about what they do and why they do it -and then witnessing why it works so effectively. I believe a doctor in the UK recently had one such moment, quite a revelation of sorts -but I will let him tell you about it himself.
