INTRODUCTIONCLASSIFICATION OF DRUGSin alphabetical order
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personal experience >>> drug addicts >>> interview 1 >>>Interview 1A – one of us, asking questions or just saying his mind A: So if you don’t want to say name just don’t say it, alright? B: OK. A: How old are you? B: 21. A: What have you graduated? B: I have graduated high school. A: What do you want to work, or maybe work at the moment? What do you do? B: Well…I have no job at the moment. A: What do you want to work? Have you thought about it? Or you haven’t? B: I haven’t yet. A: What was your dream when you were a child? What did you dream about? B: I can’t remember… A: When was the first time you tried a narcotic and what narcotic as it exactly? Was it a joint or something else? B: Well, yes it was joint, about 4-5 years ago. A: So you smoked it. And then? B: Then heroin – I started it 3 years and several months ago – two or three I can remember. A: How did you get it? Was it from a friend? B: No, from the “gypsy neighborhood” … I understood that they sell it there and… A: And who offered it to you for the first time? B: A boy for my neighborhood. A: Then it is friend (we were thinking of asking you whether it was boy or a girl), this means it was an acquaintance of yours. And what exactly made you try – was it a problem, you girlfriend or something else? B: No, it was curiosity. A: From curiosity and then started taking it frequently. When did you parents find out? B: Well...about a year and a half. A: Was it you who told them or it was someone else? B: Yes, it was someone else. A: Do you feel any gilt that you have tried. I suppose you have already given up. Do you feel guilty? May be because you have hurt your parent, or maybe because you have lost your friends? B: Well, not because I have once tried, but because of the fact that once I have tried I couldn’t stop. A: Yea, that’s really very bad. B: Otherwise there are people who have tried but… A: …they haven’t become addicts. And how do you see your life in the near future? How do you think everything will turn out for you from here on? B: Well first I want to get to this hospital and then to go to Spain in one of their communes. A: So you want to go there. What about the Bulgarian one? B: Oh, no I don’t want to go there! A: You don’t want to go there? B: I don’t like the conditions there! A: Are you familiar with them? B: I now about it briefly. A: Alright then. Do you keep meeting your old friends? B: Yeah, from time to time. A: Did you decide alone on this one, I mean this project and this treatment led by Dr. M. or it was someone else, who have influenced you? B: You could say I did it alone. A: And what reaction did you expect from your parents? How did they react, when they found out? B: When they understood for the first time? A: Yes. B: Well I stopped for a short while, several months – 3 or 4. A: And then you started all over again. B: Yes. A: OK. How do you see your life without drugs? B: Well, I think it would be just normal – job, then family and so on. A: According to you, are there are people, whose life could exist without drugs? Could you fully appreciate life without ever tasting drugs? B: Of course. A: Is it normal or everyone should try? B: No… A: You mean people can live their lives fully without ever tasting what it feels like? B: Yes, they can, but then again everybody has a different inclination and who knows what will happen later… A: So how did you take it? B: First it was just cigarettes of joint, then heroin on folio and then injections. A: What does “on folio” means? B: It means you smoke it. A: So you smoked heroin. How do you appreciate those who want to help you? Dr. M., your parents…do you have some friends, who are trying to help you. B: No. A: You have no such friends, but your parents, I suppose, are at least trying. And how do you feel now? Do you feel bad now when you’re to give up drugs? B: Yeah, you could say so. A: But you want to see it to the end, don’t you? B: Yes, I do! A: That’s very nice. What about you miss (towards the mother) – how did you find out your son was taking drugs? C: From the mother of one of his friends, who also took drugs. A: How did you feel about it? C: Very bad, I must say, because usually, not that we don’t know nothing about the problem, but, in general, everyone “passes by” the problem, until he has to deal with it face to face. When this happens, everyone is trying to help not only to his or her own child but to the others as well. A: Where did you go to find help? C: First to my GP. We have been several times the “Center for Psychotic Health”. No, I don’t want to say that they are not well prepared, but they have almost no specialists there. We have been there several times now. The other reason to get out of there is that it is a little bit expensive and not everyone can afford it. You have to pay there. WE were not very well off then, not that we are no…for the mere reason that we – me an my husband had no job for about a year, although we have completed twice two different university studies… but let me not discourage you – you study. This may happen to anyone. The medicines that are prescribed here are relatively cheap, and the check-ups are free of charge. I would say that people here treat us, me and my son, much better than those in the “Center for Psychotic Health” did. A: What medicines are prescribed – some replacements of drugs, I suppose? C: No, no, they have nothing to do with drugs. These are medicines, which regulate the blood pressure and others affect the nervous system - nothing, which will replace drugs. Such medicines are absolutely out of the question. A: Do you leave your son alone and do you worry that he might try again or you think he has overcome this period? C: No, no, he hasn’t, because he is on treatment with medicines, starting today. I will probably stay at home with him A: You said, you would help others, who suffer from the same problem. What do you think you can do? C: Well…I don’t know. If someone comes to me for advice, for example a mother, who has just found out, I would tell her a lot about the problem, about what the reactions of the child would be, what she can expect. Because, I know it is a bad thing to say, but I’m very experienced, but that’s true… because for almost three years now this has been one very serious problem for us. I have talked with other mothers as well, just to ask for advice, what were their children’ reactions, what are they doing about it and this is how we found out about the communa projects, again from mothers, whose children came back from such communas or are still there. I already have some of their numbers and this week we will call the person, who can contact us with one of the communas. A: Your son told us that first he has to be admitted to this hospital. Do you know what the therapy is all about? C: Well…if he survives in this hospital for over a week he will have to undergo a drug-test, which should be negative. The alternative is that it would be positive – this means that he’ll have to continue taking drugs, but in smaller doses. Those people are admitted in a different part of the hospital, where for about 10-15 days the doctors monitor the physical state of the health of the patients, because when there is a drastic diminishment of the doses, comes the so-called “abstinence”, strong pains, which can be controlled only with some medicaments. The first stage is complete after the patients get “cleaned up”, in other words, the physical dependency has to be overcome. The next stop is to get rid of the _psychoitc_ one, which is very hard to do and it usually takes about a year and a half. A: And you count on the communa to help you with that? C: Yes, because he has already stopped taking drugs, which means he is physically “clean”, but the _psychoitc_ dependency remains – the desire to try again. A: What do you think of the Bulgarian communa? You haven’t mentioned it, does this mean you want your son to apply only for those in Spain and the other European countries? C: As far as I know there is an awful amount of people waiting to be admitted. The conditions are I would say, very tough. Although the other communas act on the same basis, they include a lot of physical labor, yet there is not child, who has gone there and then came back because he or she didn’t like it there. And those who are now there say everything is just perfect. A: What about the financial side? Is it totally free? C: I don’t know all the details, but from what I have heard, I know that there are expenses for the journey, of course, for a passport and a visa. From that moment on the child earns his money by doing physical work. A: Should there be a guardian together with the child or not? C: No, there are people there from the comuna, who wait at the airport or the station and then they are transported to different cities, where there are comuni. My information is that the conditions there are very good and the boys and girls, who have gone there, feel just fine. We hope, now we just have to hope. A: Do you fear staying in the hospital? (towards the drug-addict) B: No. A: You are not afraid of what is going to happen? C: There shouldn’t be anything for him to worry about in the ward, because we have had everything cleared up for us – the treatment using medicines, the therapy held by specialist in psychology. They talk about different things, things that bother the patients the most. They also try to aid this therapy through this “motivational group”. There is also such a group held with parents, separately from the one composed only of drug-addicts. Sometimes come children, who are not accompanied by their parents, I don’t know why. I haven’t been in the other group. B: In the “motivational group” for example, if there is some new in the group, they ask him about his name, address; they ask him why does he want to give up drugs and stay at the hospital ward, in order to understand how much he is motivated and to consider whether he should be approved or not. C: They usually don’t take drug-addicts, who take extremely high doses, because their abstinent period is very hard to overcome. The whole purpose of the “motivational group” is to make the boys decrease the doses gradually to a state, in which they can replace the narcotic with medicines, which also makes it easier for the doctors and shows how motivated they are actually. It is important for the physicians to see that the drug-users really want to receive some treatment and they don’t do it only because their mothers say so. There are such cases, for which I’ve heard, that the parents insist on that the child admit it in front of the doctors’ commission. It is not important what the mother or the father wants but what is the will of the boy or the girl (it depends). Even if the patients make their child enter the ward, in most cases, if she or he has come of age, he or she can just sign out and leave the next day… A: Well, thank you very much. I hope that everything will turn out OK for you. I wish you luck. C: I hope we have helped you. A: Of course, take care! C: Bye! B: Bye! A: Good bye!
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