only 6 days to 'listen again' to BBC Today programme yesterday (!) - Paul Hayes was sparring with John Humphries on R4 at 7.30 am - have a listen: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7647000/7647690.stm

Arrgh mark Easton called methadone 'a vile substance that rots your teeth?' Will nobody rid us of this troublesome reporter?

Dear BBC,

Why oh why oh why do serious health and social care issues get presented by the use of un-representative anecdotal stories from people who have been sought out by reporters? why oh why oh why do complex issues get reduced to raw percentages.
Why oh why oh why are interviews cut off at the point where progress is being made in gathering understanding?

Answer. Because we are competing for attention and numbers of people listening, in case they switch to Wogan, Chris Moyles or the local radio jockey reading out snippets from Heat magazine.
Because we know if we talk about individual patients, no one with an ounce of ethical sense will comment on it.
Because it is too much hard work to try to get a reporter to look at why differences in treatment exist, particularly if the evidence requires actually knowing stuff..

I really don't know how Paul Hayes keeps his cool. Well done that man, but it is an uphill struggle. We have to remember that in the mind of the great British voting public (and therefore politicians of all shades) drug users are third on the liat of nasty people, behind only terrorists and paedophiles.

Fantastic speech by Paul I think he definitely came out on top, whoever that reporter was he needs a good shoeing.

Well said jim (and quite possibly Simon but I don't know what a shoeing is...) v good article in Guardian followed this up: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/02/dru...dalcohol.drugspolicy

Sadly, more of the same tosh in The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/mel...d/article4870401.ece

clearly had their mind made up before listening to the broadcast. (ever read a write up of a football match that you've been to, and wondered if the reporter was at the same game?)

quote:

Originally posted by susi:
Well said jim (and quite possibly Simon but I don't know what a shoeing is...) v good article in Guardian followed this up: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/02/dru...dalcohol.drugspolicy

I don't know why we look, Hugo is getting a bashing now and it's definitely not deserved!
Why does anyone talk to journalists at all - they are scum and misrepresent what is said.
I really feel for the NTA staff as whatever they say and no matter how well reasoned someone will always stick the boot in.
I guess it goes with the territory and we have to live with the fact that it will always be a battle and it would be easy to sit in a darkened room with a tin foil hat on.
As a large team we all know that what we do is right and I see the results every day in my consulting room.
I think we need to pat ourselves on the back as it's clear not many other people will.

Agree the way reported was a load of rubbish but really felt that Paul didn't manage the response well.

Oh Dear - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008..._officials_were.html

As an experienced professional working in the field I really feel depressed about the amount of ignorant rubbish being spouted. Individual views based on single cases, dogmatic assumptions about the nature of addiction etc etc .
This chap:
Dr David Hill (British resident)
Executive Director
World Innovation Foundation Charity (WIFC)
Bern, Switzerland

runs his 'WIFC' from an address above a shop in Huddersfield and the WIFC website is the most hilarious I have ever visited, up there with David Icke, yet he has the same space to say his piece as someone in possession of objective information and experience in trying to get things right, despite the actions of those they are trying so hard to help. Complaining about no-one helping is the exact parallel as the obese person complaining that 'none of the diets work'. Telling them to eat less and exercise more is absolutely correct, so why don't they just do it? Detox and rehab is obviously what is needed in just the same way for addicts, so why don't they just do it? Because it just isn't that simple.

Bah!

Agreed Jim.
The WIF thing is very odd.
I've checked the organisation out and a number of commentators are asking some very basic questions about them, not least of which is, "who are they?", and not coming to any clear conclusions.
Simon

Simon,Why not give then a ring or drop them a line? From their website alongside all the photos of Nobel Prizewinners downloaded from the web and the 'Artists impression' of the $2.25 billion Open Research Establishment that will be built in the middle of some desert, somewhere, sometime if only the workd would wake up to just how correct he is.....
Postal address: The World Innovation Foundation
P.O. Box A60
Huddersfield
ENGLAND
HD1 1XJ
Telephone: From within the UK: (01484) 537 181

Wikipaedia will not list him, he has been spamming them whenever they say something he disagrees with. He holds an honorary doctorate from the National Academy of Kyrgyzstan.

Let me know how you get on.

Arrgh mark Easton called methadone 'a vile substance that rots your teeth?' Will nobody rid us of this troublesome reporter?

Hi Susi,
I'm sure for £50.00 it can be arranged

Once again it is incredibly demoralising to hear & see cheap-tat tabloid journalism making completely unreal statements about things they have no 'real' knowledge about. The drug treatment services have changed beyond all recognition over the last 10yrs and it has been to the benefit of problem drug users that these changes have had the most impact, mostly for the better, but real individualised treatment is still not the norm everywhere.

As usual the moral high ground is grasped by these media whores to push their own or, possibly the views of the 'usual suspects' they have consulted, that no-one is being cured by the present system of treatment.

When these people use language like "cured & drug free" it is an easy ploy to get the hungry masses to believe that they are paying for 'dirty, no-good drug addicts to get their drugs for free' and given the state of the global financial meltdown it is no wonder it is consumed like a good "full english" breakfast

From my experience people who are successful in treatment like to leave it behind and move on and don't really want their previous drug problems to become 'public knowledge' because of the stigma and discrimination constantly attached to past or present "drug addiction"

I just wonder if some of the articles that have been published in this weekend's pseudo-tabloid publications, that followed this interview, were written whilst having consumed a few bottles of 'good red' or god forbid a few lines of the Columbian currency
Regards
Dave Penn;

Hi Dave, good to hear from you, some classic phrases in here and its a good point that people who leave treatment tend to becom invisible and have no voice, usually by their own volition. But we must pity the poor 'media whores', for the concepts are just too much for them. Actually that's a perfect description, as it seems to me journalists can be so ingrained in the culture of quick tease/easy please, their training leads them to see a bunch of figures and draw an emotive conclusion from them without wasting time on deeper analysis....

So here are a few facts and an an analogy which I offer to the confused Mr Easton, which I hope will help him to understand what it is he is really seeing when he looks at those statistics:
1. The background figure of problem drug users is not going up, it is stable
2. However the proportion of those problem drug users who are accesssing treatment is rising year on year. This means that the figure for treatment penetration is improving
3. Once in treatment, it takes 5-6 years for a drug user to exit drug free, on average, but this is a highly variable figure
Why does this mean 3% is misleading? This analogy may help -
Tonight I made spaghetti for tea. When I poured the water from the saucepan into the colander, for a few seconds, the spaghetti blocked the holes,and the colander filled up with water. For a while the colander was full of water. Eventually the water drained away. If you imagine the water in the saucepan is the total number of drug users out of treatment, as you pour it into the colander, they are entering treatment, but they stay there for a long time. (Clearly, the water coming out of the holes is the numbers exiting treatment). If you just measured the water coming out of the holes in a short time, say one second - you would say hardly any is getting out. During that same second, you would see the water level in the colander stay the same, or even rise as more was added from the saucepan.
So using this analogy, I hope its clear that if you just meaure the figure of drug users exiting treatment in only one year (3%) it will appear small, and that during that same year the numbers in treatment will appear static or rising. One year is (relatively) just a 'snapshot' in the 5-6 year life cycle of a user's journey through treatment.
Of course its a bit more complicated than that in real life. 4. New people do come into drug use, (the saucepan) but at present they are not coming in faster than the ones going into treatment. A good proportion of them (sorry I don't know the estimated figure but could get it if you wish) will never need treatment and detox themselves. (That's the water spilling out of the saucepan straight into the sink and by-passing the colander)
5. A small proportion of drug users in treatment (the colander) will never exit. This is sad reality, and there are many reasons. For some it helps them cope with an awful life or awful past experiences. For some starting very young (as young as 11 is not that uncommon) means they have no experience really of life without drugs. And for some, their drug use does not seem to impact sufficiently on their lifestyle for them to feel it is worth giving up. Our job as professionals, is never to write anybody off, and to always keep trying, things change, you should never lose hope. 6. Some will relapse and re-enter treatment (like recycling the water exiting from the colander). We need to keep this to a minimum. *This has policy implications - I believe the DWP should be advocating employers taking on those recently exited from treatment, instead of, as proposed in green paper (No-one Written Off) those who are pre-treatment. The exited ones will do much better in jobs than those who are still 'bang at it' (ie using drugs chaotically) who will not be motivated to stick at it. *
7. There are variations in all these factors depending on region. 8. Overall, we are getting better at getting people into treatment. Over the course of a few years, in any given region, there will appear to be a 'hump' (a bit like baby boomers) as the service gets better, and then, as treatment penetration rises, the law of diminishing returns starts to apply, you have recruited all the 'easy' patients, and are now trying to attract the really 'hard-to-reach' ones. If you take your snapshot at the time of the 'hump' it will appear even worse - lots more in treatment, hardly any been through the necessary 5-6 years to get out. (But remember, the timing of the hump will vary from region to region as not all services have improved at the same rate).

does this help?

quote:

does this help?

Yes Susi, I think it does.
I frequently reach for analogies when trying to explain something. I do catch myself sounding a bit like David Brent sometimes and have to fess up to that, usually to my amused staff.
But it's quite a visual one the colander analogy and I like it.

On the Welfare to Reform issue, I guess the current finacial situation is so febrile that anything, both economic and political, could happen. See this letter in the Guardian by the truly geat Peter Townsend: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/09/economics.economy

Cheers
Simon