poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
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Aus - The drug habits of highly effective people
Every day Simon gets up at 5.30am to do yoga. Afterwards he heads to his full-time job at a university. Sometimes, he throws in some volunteer work as well.
"I'd say I'm a pretty busy person," Simon, not his real name, says.
The reason he doesn't want his name used is because there's one other part of his lifestyle Simon is explaining.
"I would use drugs a couple of times a month," he says. "Hallucinogens, mainly, and MDMA".
He also uses cannabis and alcohol, although he tends to only drink one or two nights a week.
"I'm reasonably healthy, I look after myself a lot of the time, I'm probably not what a lot of people who are anti-drug have as their stereotype of a drug user," he says.
But Simon is a pretty good example of the type of drug user identified by the Global Drug Survey, conducted this year in Australia in partnership with Fairfax Media.
At 32, he is a little younger than many people who shared their experiences, about 30 per cent of whom were aged between 40 and 60.
Overall, the 6600 respondents were an educated, healthy, heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon and well-off bunch - about a quarter earned over $100,000 each year.
The survey is the biggest ever undertaken in Australia examining current illegal drug users, with about two-thirds of people using them in the past year, and about 45 per cent in the past month.
It paints a picture of the mainstream drug user: one largely ignored by our focus on the harm, and crime, associated with drugs.
Prohibition, many police admit, is having little effect on this user.
Global Drug Survey founder and director Dr Adam Winstock is a London-based addiction psychiatrist.
"I spend my life working with one group of drug users, and they seem to be the only group that governments are interested in," he says. "That's the group whose lives are ruined by drugs, but that is a tiny minority."
Two years ago, he had an epiphany: someone needs to talk to these users, find out what they are doing and give them a forum to find out more.
Along with the survey he started a website called drugsmeter, which allows users to get feedback.
"You need to start thinking about basing your policy and your services around the 80 to 90 per cent of people who use drugs," Winstock says.
And all over the world, he says, those people are similar: next door neighbours, mothers and fathers, university students.
Winstock says the Australian respondents to the survey were slightly older on average than those in Britain, and less likely to be in the clubbing scene.
That is probably more a reflection of the fact that in Britain the survey also partners with a music publication called Mixmag
"Your drugs are also much more expensive here; ecstasy is $25-$30 whereas in the UK it's $10-$15. A gram of cocaine is $350 whereas in the UK it's $75," Winstock says.
Cont -
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-drug-habits-of-highly-effective-people-20130315-2g5rk.html
Every day Simon gets up at 5.30am to do yoga. Afterwards he heads to his full-time job at a university. Sometimes, he throws in some volunteer work as well.
"I'd say I'm a pretty busy person," Simon, not his real name, says.
The reason he doesn't want his name used is because there's one other part of his lifestyle Simon is explaining.
"I would use drugs a couple of times a month," he says. "Hallucinogens, mainly, and MDMA".
He also uses cannabis and alcohol, although he tends to only drink one or two nights a week.
"I'm reasonably healthy, I look after myself a lot of the time, I'm probably not what a lot of people who are anti-drug have as their stereotype of a drug user," he says.
But Simon is a pretty good example of the type of drug user identified by the Global Drug Survey, conducted this year in Australia in partnership with Fairfax Media.
At 32, he is a little younger than many people who shared their experiences, about 30 per cent of whom were aged between 40 and 60.
Overall, the 6600 respondents were an educated, healthy, heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon and well-off bunch - about a quarter earned over $100,000 each year.
The survey is the biggest ever undertaken in Australia examining current illegal drug users, with about two-thirds of people using them in the past year, and about 45 per cent in the past month.
It paints a picture of the mainstream drug user: one largely ignored by our focus on the harm, and crime, associated with drugs.
Prohibition, many police admit, is having little effect on this user.
Global Drug Survey founder and director Dr Adam Winstock is a London-based addiction psychiatrist.
"I spend my life working with one group of drug users, and they seem to be the only group that governments are interested in," he says. "That's the group whose lives are ruined by drugs, but that is a tiny minority."
Two years ago, he had an epiphany: someone needs to talk to these users, find out what they are doing and give them a forum to find out more.
Along with the survey he started a website called drugsmeter, which allows users to get feedback.
"You need to start thinking about basing your policy and your services around the 80 to 90 per cent of people who use drugs," Winstock says.
And all over the world, he says, those people are similar: next door neighbours, mothers and fathers, university students.
Winstock says the Australian respondents to the survey were slightly older on average than those in Britain, and less likely to be in the clubbing scene.
That is probably more a reflection of the fact that in Britain the survey also partners with a music publication called Mixmag
"Your drugs are also much more expensive here; ecstasy is $25-$30 whereas in the UK it's $10-$15. A gram of cocaine is $350 whereas in the UK it's $75," Winstock says.
Cont -
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-drug-habits-of-highly-effective-people-20130315-2g5rk.html
