Abstract
Harm reduction has been increasingly finding its way into public drug policies and healthcare practices worldwide, with successful intervention measures justifiably focussing on the highest-risk groups, such as injecting drug users. However, there are also other types of drug users in need for harm reduction, even though they pose less, low, or no public health risk. Occasionally, drug users may autonomously organise themselves into groups to provide advocacy, harm reduction, and peer-help services, sometimes online. The http://www.daath.hu website has been operated since 2001 by the “Hungarian Psychedelic Community”, an unorganised drug user group with a special interest in hallucinogenic and related substances. As of today, the website serves about 1200 visitors daily, and the online community comprises of more than 8000 registered members. The Daath community is driven by a strong commitment to the policy of harm reduction in the form of various peer-help activities that aim to expand harm reduction without promoting drug use. Our review comprehensively summarises Daath’s user-led harm reduction services and activities from the last ten years, firstly outlining the history and growth phases of Daath, along with its self-set guidelines and policies. Online services (such as a discussion board, and an Ecstasy pill database) and offline activities (such as Ecstasy pill field testing, and a documentary film about psychedelics) are described. In order to extend its harm reduction services and activities in the future, Daath has several social, commercial, and legislative challenges to face. Starting with a need to realign its focus, outlooks for the upcoming operation of Daath are pondered. Future trends in harm reduction, such as separating harm-decreasing from benefit-increasing, are also discussed. We aim to share these innovative harm reduction measures and good practices in order to be critically assessed, and – if found useful – adapted and applied elsewhere.
Highlights
In the last decade, harm reduction has slowly but steadily found its way into public drug policies and healthcare practices on national and international levels
Characteristic trends in the emerging information society have been utilised by governmental organisations (GOs), nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), as well as unorganised interest groups, such as peer-helping drug user communities [3,4]—but not at all without criticism
As an underground group of peer-helping drug users, Daath has to utilise a broad range of innovative measures in tackling with the difficult task of providing harm reduction without being accused of promoting drug use
Summary
Background In the last decade, harm reduction has slowly but steadily found its way into public drug policies and healthcare practices on national and international levels. Carefully selected and communicated harm reduction information – while it may inevitably increase drug use prevalence to some extent – should be able to decrease actual drug-related harm. By establishing an Ecstasy pill database and increasingly providing information on new synthetic drugs (NSD), Daath started to focus on harm reduction for recreational party drug users. Drugs that are not considered psychedelic – such as heroin and opioids, cocaine and amphetamines, prescription drugs, and inhalants – are generally excluded from Daath discussions One reason for this is to express a clear separation between the preferred “mind expanding” drug subculture and the despised “mind contracting” usage of depressants and stimulants. This threshold has been considered adequate to let in those who are interested enough, and to keep out the rest of the registrants
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