WATCH: Ana Liffey’s video submission to the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use

The video runs for nine minutes, it includes people with lived experience and highlights issues such as…

• Dual Diagnosis; the issues facing our service users is wider than just mental health and addiction. Many of our service users have undiagnosed intellectual disabilities and other issues such as ADHD; it not possible to get an adequate assessment of these for adults who use drugs. These undiagnosed and therefore untreated comorbidities hold people back.
• Lack of housing impacts on people’s engagement with harm reduction and stabilisation; their safety and their recovery.
• Lack of Treatment and Rehab services in the regions is a problem for people who use drugs.  For example, in one week, one of our Midwest Team members (and a volunteer) spent two working days driving two separate service users out of the region for assessment. That’s just for the assessment, not even getting into treatment.
• Alternatives to methadone are urgently required as a harm reduction / community treatment option; and people need to have suitable solutions which don’t have them attending a clinic every day.
• Ana Liffey supports the Government’s policy of implementing a Health Diversion Program for the possession of drugs for personal use.  This policy is a step in the right direction. However, this scheme would be enhanced, and more effective, if people were offered every opportunity rather than the one opportunity currently planned for.

Watch it now by clicking on the video below: