Over the last month, we have been tackling the issues of stigma surrounding substance use by attending events, we attended:
- Alcohol Awareness Day at James Paget Hospital
- First Light Festival in Lowestoft
- Community Alcohol Partnership.
Throughout these events, we have delivered harm reduction advice around the county to many individuals and given out spikies, cup covers, unit measuring cups, and pens.
In June, we attended the First Light Festival in Lowestoft in the rain, which didn’t stop our staff's enthusiasm for delivering harm reduction advice around alcoholism and drug addiction.
The idea to give bottles of water to the festival goers went down very well and we did this to indicate the point of staying hydrated when consuming alcohol and taking drugs, due to the fact they both cause you to become dehydrated.
We have a box, which contains lots of fake drugs which allows us to engage in conversation about the different types of substances while maintaining the delivery of harm-reduction advice. Finally, we highlighted the huge risks and impacts that Nitazenes are having on society.
Other than being soaking wet our staff enjoyed the day out and we were very pleased with the advice delivered and feedback received.
Alcohol Awareness Week ran from Monday 1st July to Monday 7th July, we attended two events.
The first event we attended was on Wednesday 3 July, Alcohol Awareness Day at James Paget and were joined by Turning Point, Anglia Care Trust, the Alcohol Care Team, and the Police. The purpose behind attending this event was to help raise awareness of the impact alcohol has on individuals/groups in society and to deliver harm reduction advice to staff and patients of James Paget Hospital.
We highlighted the importance of measuring units of alcohol when drinking different types of alcohol, as they are all different and making individuals fully aware of the government's recommended amount, which is 14 units per week.
Overall, we found it a very positive event.
The final event we attended during Alcohol Awareness Week was the Community Alcohol Partnership event with the Police on Gorleston High Street.
We joined Norfolk Police to deliver harm reduction and raise awareness of street drinking in Norfolk and the impact it has on society. The event allowed us to use beer goggles to represent what the vision is like when drinking and the effect it has on movement.
We found it very engaging and will continue to work in partnership with Norfolk Police to deliver harm-reduction advice across the county to ensure the safety of our service users and members of society.
Thank you for taking chance to the read this, why not head over to our social media channels to see what we have been up to in the meantime?