So you don’t want to stop?

 

Practicing Harm Reduction in substance use and process/behavioral addictions By Jesus Mendez Carbajal, APCC Jesus is a bilingual (Spanish/English) Associate Professional Clinical Counselor (APCC) who holds a B.A. in Chicana/o Studies with a minor in Women’s Studies, and an M.S. in Counseling from SDSU’s Community Based Block (CBB) Multicultural Community Counseling and Social Justice Education Program. Jesus understands that while the issues people face are personally experienced, they’re also connected to systems of power, privilege and oppression and their impact extends beyond the self. Overall, Jesus is a passionate life-long student of healing, plant knowledge, emotional wellness, mental health, and spirituality.

It’s ok if you don’t want to stop using a substance or stop a behavior--unless you’re causing harm to minors, dependent adults or elderly adults. Working with the assumption that one is not actively causing harm to others, can we sit with the reality that we don’t want to stop? Can it be ok for us to not stop? If this resonates with you, there’s harm reduction strategies that you can practice in order to ensure your substance use or the behaviors you’re engaging in are safer. You can try placing a limit on how much of the substance you’ll use on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can set limits and boundaries with yourself about drinking a cup of water after every alcoholic drink, be it a shot, a glass of wine or a mixed drink. You can commit to using clean needles and not share needles with anyone. You can make sure to carry a fentanyl test kit and naloxone should you or someone around you need it. You can make sure to not drink and drive, use a Rideshare app to order a ride, designate someone as the sober driver of the night and place a drinking limit on yourself. No matter where you stand with your substance use or behaviors, modifications and changes can be made to move you from where you are, towards where you want to be. 

Principles of Harm Reduction directly from the National Harm Reduction Coalition:

• Accepts, for better or worse, that licit and illicit drug use is part of our world and chooses to work to minimize its harmful effects rather than simply ignore or condemn them.

• Understands drug use as a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon that encompasses a continuum of behaviors from severe use to total abstinence, and acknowledges that some ways of using drugs are clearly safer than others.

• Establishes quality of individual and community life and well-being — not necessarily cessation of all drug use — as the criteria for successful interventions and policies.

• Calls for the non-judgmental, non-coercive provision of services and resources to people who use drugs and the communities in which they live in order to assist them in reducing attendant harm.

• Ensures that people who use drugs and those with a history of drug use routinely have a real voice in the creation of programs and policies designed to serve them. 

• Affirms people who use drugs (PWUD) themselves as the primary agents of reducing the harms of their drug use and seeks to empower PWUD to share information and support each other in strategies which meet their actual conditions of use.

• Recognizes that the realities of poverty, class, racism, social isolation, past trauma, sex-based discrimination, and other social inequalities affect both people’s vulnerability to and capacity for effectively dealing with drug-related harm. 

• Does not attempt to minimize or ignore the real and tragic harm and danger that can be associated with illicit drug use.

If you would like more information about harm reduction or other support during your journey, please reach out to us at MiraCosta Student Health Services at 760-795-6675 or MCCSHS@MiraCosta.edu, via our contact form at www.miracosta.edu/healthServices or stop by room 14114 (building 14) at the Oceanside campus.