Pubdate: Fri, 09 Feb 2007
Source: North Coast Journal (CA)
Section: Cover Story
Copyright: 2007, North Coast Journal
Contact:  http://www.northcoastjournal.com/Welcome.html
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2833
Author: Bob Doran

FIGHTING DEMONS: THE PLACEBO HARM REDUCTION COLLECTIVE AND HOW IT CAME TO BE

The guitar player is dressed head to toe in black. Flanked by a 
drummer and a key-board player at a Eureka coffee-house on a Saturday 
night, he rips into a set of music he describes as "zombie surf 
rock." He starts with a number called "Zombie Songs" and works his 
way through "Haunt This World" and "Snakes in Your Head," among 
others. The songs are dark and heavy, but not without humor. You'd 
have to know something about James Harken, leader and songwriter for 
The Invasions, to realize how personal some of them are.

For years, James has been fighting an army of demons: binge drinking, 
addiction to drugs (primarily prescription narcotics) and anxiety and 
other mental problems, including suicidal tendencies. He says: "I see 
zombies as a metaphor for everything that's going on -- obviously 
with the drug scene, but also the state of the world with all these 
people working jobs they hate, living like zombies."

While he perceives his zombie-themed songs as a "fun" way to touch on 
serious issues, it's not hard to see a song like "Haunt This World" 
and its chorus -- "I don't want to haunt this world alone" -- as a 
direct expression of what's going on in his head, snakes and all.

A few weeks earlier, James shuffled papers as he prepared for the 
weekly Tuesday night gathering of the Placebo Harm Reduction 
Collective. The burly 28-year-old, wearing a loose jacket and a 
military-style cap adorned with a red star, seemed just a tad nervous 
as he looked at the clock and announced the start of the meeting.

The collective's intent is to provide a support group for those 
facing problems with drugs and alcohol -- it's billed as "an 
alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous," but the structure is akin to 
A.A. James kicked things off with the traditional introduction 
("Hello, my name is James") and noted that he is the founder of the 
group. He then read from a mission statement explaining that the 
collective is not a 12-Step organization; instead, it is "about 
choice." Without going into detail, he described the group's goal as 
"harm reduction rather than abstinence."

James didn't delve into much personal history or explain why he put 
the group together. Suffice to say, he was there because he doesn't 
want to "haunt this world alone," and because he hopes that he can 
help others like him battling their own demons.

What Happened To Dave

James was far more talkative when we met in that same room at the 
Eureka Co-op a few days prior. He explained that he'd been trying to 
get his life together since he landed a job at the Co-op five months 
ago. He found a kindred spirit in Dave, who was hired a couple of 
weeks after James.

"We were talking and somehow we got on the topic of suicide and drug 
addiction," said James, sitting back in his chair as we talked in the 
new store's demonstration kitchen. He was on lunch break, picking 
intermittently at a couple of raviolis and swigging from a tall 
bottle of vitamin water.

"Dave invited me over to his house. He'd had problems with drinking 
and had been part of the A.A. community for a while trying to get 
past it, but he was still drinking.

"He saw the scars on my arms where I'd tried to slit my wrists one 
time. I told him about that, and about how I'd overdosed on pills 
last year after I got fired from my last job. I got really depressed 
and took every pill I had in my house. I was in a coma for two days 
and didn't know what I did when I woke up."

While Dave couldn't really relate to James' suicidal episodes, they 
became friends. Both were fighting similar demons. In November of 
last year both were having relationship problems. James had broken up 
with his girlfriend; Dave's fiancee was working out of town.

"He called me up, wanted to hang out. He was freaking out about his 
fiancee. I didn't know how bad things were for him. I went to his 
house. I could tell things were bad; he hadn't shaved or eaten and 
he'd been drinking for a few days straight, but he was out of liquor. 
He wanted me to buy him a bottle. This was a major relapse for him. 
Then he said, 'I gotta tell you something: I loaded my nine 
millimeter today. I want to shoot myself, but I can't pull the trigger.'

"I freaked. I didn't know what to say. I told him, 'It's time to call 
Sempervirens. That's what we should do.'

"Dave was very compliant; he said, 'You're right. I need to go there 
right now. My only other choice is to shoot myself in the head.'

"We called them and they were like, 'No, we can't take you.' We said, 
'Fuck that,' and drove there. They saw what state he was in, it was 
obvious he was bad off. They said he needed to go to detox and, 'You 
can't stay here tonight.'

"I've learned since that there's a certain level of drunkenness where 
you can't be admitted, but I know he was under that level. He was 
coherent and everything. We were talking with the intake guy in the 
lobby of county mental health, sitting on the couches. Dave told the 
guy, 'I need help to get over this thing. I'm a recovering alcoholic 
and I need help. I need to stay here tonight.'

"Again, they said he had to go to detox. But there were no beds 
available there that night, so he'd have to go in the morning. Dave 
was like, 'What? You're going to let me walk out of here? I have a 
loaded gun at home and I'm going to shoot myself.'

"They told him, 'Oh, that's just the alcohol talking. Alcoholism 
can't kill you.' That's a direct quote. Dave was really bummed about 
the whole thing, but he had no choice. He said he'd go to detox in 
the morning, then he left with me.

"He wanted me to buy him a bottle, but I said, 'No, I'm taking you to 
detox in the morning.' I also asked if I could see the gun. He said, 'No.'

"He's also kind of a chronic liar so I didn't exactly believe he even 
had a gun. I left him at his place feeling confident that he wasn't 
going to do himself in. He seemed to realize that detox was the way 
to go. That's what he said.

"Apparently he shot himself five minutes after I left. It really 
pisses me off. He shot himself in the right temple and blew his 
brains all over the room. That's what happened to Dave."

James' Story

James seems to be on the path to better choices now, but that was not 
always the case. "I started using when I was 12, the summer between 
6th and 7th grade," he recalled in our first encounter at the Co-op. 
"Every weekend I'd get drunk and take pills. Me and my friend would 
get drunk and my mom had had back surgery so I'd take her pills.

"I tried pot but never really got into it -- I was more into pills 
and drinking. When I was 15 I got into Primatene, an over-the-counter 
medication with a lot of ephedrine in it for a speed high. Then I 
started doing speed like crazy. I dropped out of high school; I 
wasn't doing very good. I lied about my age and got a job at 
Hewlett-Packard, so I was making a bunch of money. I was still living 
at home so I always had money for drugs."

Moving from speed to opiates, he found himself addicted to Vicodin 
and Percocet.

"It escalated pretty bad until around the time I turned 19 when I 
decided to quit, did a complete 180, started going to A.A. and N.A. 
and went vegan straight-edge.

"N.A. is where I met all my heroin junkie friends. I was just a pill 
junkie. Then those friends started dropping like flies -- pretty much 
all of my junkie friends are dead now, either from drug overdoses or 
other problems. I decided to quit that whole scene and go to school. 
I got my GED and came up here to Humboldt for college."

Moving to Humboldt was a good move, at least at first. He joined a 
rock band called Mutiny (playing punk-style sea shanties of all 
things) and joined the Placebo, a youth organization setup to give 
kids a place to play music and to offer an alternative to drugs and alcohol.

"It was OK at first, but then I started drinking again, then I fell 
in with a part of the music scene that was into pills. A lot of them 
had kicked heroin, but they were still into pills."

He joined a new band and found a new creative outlet, but the drugs 
and liquor got the better of him.

"Once again I was taking a lot of Vicodin. I had some minor medical 
problems and I'd use that for doctor-shopping. I'd have like four 
doctors prescribing things for me and I'd go to different pharmacies."

On top of his physical problems he was dealing with recurring mental 
problems -- depression, anxiety and suicidal tendencies, for which a 
doctor prescribed Lexapro and Klonopin. Between the pills for his 
psyche problems and the opiates for his pain, he was a walking 
medicine cabinet.

"I'd been drinking through all that. I decided to quit. The last show 
for my old band was the last time I drank. I didn't think I'd been 
drinking that much, but I got really sick. It really messed with my anxiety."

Then when he landed a job at the Eureka Co-op five months ago, he set 
about trying to get his life in order and stop taking pills. Most of 
them, anyway.

Around the time Dave shot himself, another band James had been 
playing in was sailing on troubled waters. One of his bandmates who'd 
been battling heroin addiction, "went off the deep end," as James put 
it. "He relapsed big time. And I started to relapse myself, mostly 
drinking on top of the prescription drugs I was taking. I knew I 
needed to do something."

James and his friend started going to A.A. meetings, "but he just 
couldn't deal with it; I couldn't either. There's the whole God 
thing, giving yourself over to a 'higher power.' We didn't want to 
hold hands and do that whole number where you try to convince 
yourself it'll work if we just keep coming back to meetings."

James was raised Catholic, but now considers himself an atheist. So 
for him, sitting at an A.A. meeting pretending to ask God for help 
seemed hypocritical. Beyond that, he sees A.A.'s first step -- 
admitting that you are powerless -- as an abdication of personal 
responsibility. God is not going to defeat his demons, he has to do it himself.

"Plus, A.A. doesn't really focus on the fact that drugs and alcohol 
can be self-medication for anxiety and suicide. It all goes hand in 
hand. I choose to be sober and abstain from drugs, but I do have to 
take my meds. I need Klonopin to stop my anxiety attacks; it keeps me 
steady. A.A. doesn't allow that because it's a narcotic. A.A. says 
drug addiction and alcoholism are a disease, but it doesn't focus on 
the fact that mental issues and self-medication are part of drug addiction."

All of that was running through his mind when Julie Ryan, a Placebo 
coordinator, asked him if he'd be interested in leading some 
A.A.-style meetings in the youth group's Eureka space. He'd been 
reading a book titled, Over the Influence, about something called 
"harm reduction," and suggested something more along those lines.

"Harm reduction meets the user where they're at, tries to help them 
move toward sobriety. It sees progress as cutting down, not just the 
time you've been sober, whereas A.A. only measures success by how 
long you've been sober; you get a chip for 30 days or whatever. The 
truth is, every step you take toward sobriety and improving your 
mental health is a huge thing and should be celebrated."

Through Julie, James got in touch with Nancy Courtemanche. Nancy's 
son, the musician/artist Rob Rierdan, lost a battle with his personal 
demons and died of a drug overdose in November 2005. (See sidebar) 
Since then, Nancy has been reaching out to the local youth music 
scene, mostly through Placebo. Last summer she became a sponsor of 
Bummerfest, Placebo's annual music festival, which was founded in 
part by her son. She gave a couple of impassioned speeches telling 
Rob's story and urging the crowd to recognize the impact of choices 
they make in their lives.

Nancy became a major champion for James' plan for a Placebo Harm 
Reduction Collective. Since the group formed she's attended every 
meeting offering support and testimony. She suggested to James that 
the group adopt Rob's signature character, Happy, as a mascot of sorts.

"Happy was like Rob's alter-ego, it is what Rob would have liked to 
have been," Nancy said. "I see it as a symbol of making a positive 
choice, a good choice."'

Social Workers, Cops And Harm Reduction

Ronnie Swartz is a trained social worker who teaches courses at HSU 
with titles like "advanced practice in problematic substance use" and 
"drugs, justice and harm reduction."

He explains: "That term, 'problematic substance use,' is a term used 
more and more in Canada and elsewhere to acknowledge that not all 
drug use is drug abuse. For those who work with folks dealing with 
alcohol and drug problems, it's the problematic use of substances 
that you focus on."

And the term "harm reduction"? What does it mean in the world of 
social work? "First it means approaching people who are using drugs 
and alcohol in a non-judgmental way. Rather than trying to get people 
to stop using drugs altogether, which is the approach that's been 
used for decades here in the United States, it's more effective to 
assist people in reducing the harm that comes from their use of drugs.

"The most effective way to reduce harm is to stop using drugs, so 
complete abstinence is part of the harm reduction spectrum. But it 
also includes assisting people to move toward safer ways to use 
alcohol or other drugs."

A simple -- and non-controversial -- example of harm reduction 
currently in practice is any program encouraging a designated driver 
for a group out on the town drinking. The movement, modeled after a 
similar Scandinavian program, was first put forward in the U.S. in 
the early '90s with a mass media campaign. It recognizes a basic 
fact, that people who are drinking will inevitably drink to excess 
and put lives at risk. Instead of trying in vain to prohibit 
drinking, an experiment Americans failed at early in the 20th 
century, the idea is to reduce the harm caused by drinking.

American history tells us of the disaster that followed the 18th 
Amendment prohibiting alcohol, and of its eventual appeal. One could 
argue that the prohibition of various illicit drugs has been no more 
successful, but it's what we have right now.

"The federal government approaches illicit drugs in a zero-tolerance, 
abstinence-only way," notes Swartz. "One way it does that is by only 
funding abstinence-only drug programs. It's really the exception in 
the international community -- and it's also not always true at the 
state level. For example, needle exchange programs are a form of harm 
reduction. The thinking is that HIV and Hepatitis-C are common in 
injection drug users. Trying to get these drug users to stop using 
their drugs has not been tremendously effective. So, how can we 
reduce the rates of HIV and AIDS and Hepatitis-C? One way to do that 
is to make sure people use clean needles. There is a lot of research 
to suggest that this works. The federal government will not pay for 
that, but the state of California will."

Interim Eureka Police Chief Murl Harpham has drawn fire in recent 
weeks after lashing out at local drug treatment programs that he says 
"enable" users. After a series of letters pro and con in the 
Times-Standard, Harpham submitted a "My Word" opinion piece 
clarifying his position. While softening his position on "meaningful" 
treatment (even complimenting the Crossroads rehab program), he added 
the county's needle exchange program, Prop. 36 (the 
treatment-not-jails law) and the "harm reduction program" to his list 
of drug-abuse enablers.

Harpham dismisses needle exchange as ineffective: "I deal with these 
people all of the time down in the brush. For six years I was dealing 
with them. They still share needles in the encampments. They all use 
the same needle. Each one of our police cars has a sharps container 
because we come in contact with needles so much. They're out there 
everywhere. It's crazy."

For the old school, streetwise cop who walked a beat, the notion of 
harm reduction is not a solution. "It's not something that's going to 
stop the drug problem. It encourages them to continue their drug use 
while they're supposedly on treatment, with the theory being you'll 
eventually wean yourself off. The way out [of drug abuse] is not in 
enabling these people. That's the way I understand harm reduction. 
People need to be accountable for what they do. That's something we 
lack in our society today.

"I think it all started in the '60s with the drug culture. The media 
glamorized it with all those Cheech and Chong movies and LSD, 
marijuana and stuff like that. All that turned a lot of people on to 
drugs in our society. I honestly believe that a lot of genes were 
changed. And now those people who were doing all that experimenting, 
their kids are the ones we're dealing with who are having all these problems."

For Swartz it's a matter of compassion. "Another premise of harm 
reduction is this: How can we keep people alive long enough for them 
to choose abstinence?" Swartz says he can "understand the perspective 
of the interim police chief, but I don't think his views reflect the 
overall EPD. Needle exchange would not be possible without some 
support from the police and public officials."

Swartz is among those who would like public officials to take a major 
leap on drug policy to reduce overdoses. "The major reason drug users 
overdose from heroin is the uncertainty in the purity of the supply," 
he says. "They're used to a particular purity and know the quantity 
to take, then they get a batch that's of a much higher purity, take 
the same amount they've been taking, and that leads to an overdose. 
That's a direct result of prohibition."

Other countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Great Britain, Australia 
and British Columbia in Canada, have adopted harm reduction programs 
that include heroin maintenance.

"It sounds far out from the American perspective," says Swartz, "but 
the way it works is, people will go to a clinic and a physician will 
give them pharmaceutical quality heroin, which is an incredibly safe 
drug. What's not safe is the kind of crap people get on the streets. 
It's pure quality and it's administered in a safe way. It sort of 
reflects what we do in the states with methadone maintenance. That's 
been going on since the mid-1960s. That's a form of harm reduction."

While it has been discussed intermittently for years, Humboldt County 
still has no methadone program.

"There's a lot of opposition to it here, for a couple of reasons. 
There's the moral idea, which fuels a lot of drug policy. That sees 
it as substituting one drug for another. They're not using heroin, 
but they're using methadone, which is an opiate, an addictive 
narcotic, and it could be abused. The idea is that instead of having 
someone become addicted to something else we should help them break 
free of all drugs. It's the idea that some drugs are worse than 
others and that people just shouldn't use drugs, whatever they are."

The other related hurdle is the age-old NIMBY factor. No one wants a 
methadone clinic, or any sort of drug treatment facility, in their 
neighborhood.

The Meeting

No one seemed to be bothered by the Tuesday evening gathering of the 
Placebo Harm Reduction Collective, announced only by a placard 
outside the meeting room showing Happy. Co-op shoppers wheeled their 
carts past, unaware of the drama inside.

James finished his introductions. Nancy was next to speak. "I'm here 
because my son died of a drug overdose," she began, adding, "It 
changed my life forever." She discussed her son's depression and 
associated self-medication, his need to "feel right in his skin."

Another in the circle, a woman in a red hat who said she's in 
training to be a drug counselor, began by describing the allure of 
getting high. "I did drugs all my life. That's what I was good at. I 
loved it, loved the escape, the fun."

Her path took her from speed and alcohol to indulging in "shrooms and 
X" while on Dead tour, then on to crack and heroin. Now she's moved 
beyond drugs thanks to buphenorphine, a treatment similar to 
methadone. "It kept me from getting sick, which is really why heroin 
addicts keep at it," she said. "After a while, you don't really get 
high -- you just don't feel sick.

"Now I feel great," she concluded. "I know I can be happy."

The testimonies continue from a cross-section of Humboldters. A 
well-dressed gent spoke of meth causing his family "to go upside-down 
in our finances." A 20-something man noted that he "paid the price" 
for his drug and alcohol abuse and "ended up living on the street." 
Saying that he'd been clean "for a while now," he noted that he'd 
been coming to the collective's meetings since the beginning. "It 
helps me, gives me something to look forward to," he concluded.

When it came back to James, he slipped into A.A.-speak. "I'm James 
and I've been sober six weeks now," he began. "I know I feel better 
because of these meetings."

The demons are at bay for James, at least for the time being. As this 
story goes to press, he's still sober. And he's not alone.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman