A Personal Report to NAMA’s Chapters and Affiliates

I came to be informed of the Invitational Conference on Drug User Activism and the concurrent celebration of International Drug User Day while reviewing the NAMA web page https://www.methadone.org for technical and informational purposes. The page had been in a continual state of revision by Joycelyn S. Woods, NAMA’s President and as part of my assumed work as a member of NAMA’s Board of Directors I would check the page from time to time and provide reports to Joyce. I was checking the dropdown menus at the top of the main page and a mouseover command showed a “”conference”” page. I released the mouse over the conference topic to determine if we had listed the Drug Policy Alliance conference and was scrolling down the page. Suddenly I stopped. It was like finding a diamond. There was an announcement for the Invitational Conference on Drug User Activism sponsored by two European Users groups, one from Denmark and the other from the Netherlands. The Danish group was the Danish Drug Users Union (BrugerForeningen) also known by the acronym BF. The Netherlands group was the Dutch National Interest Group of Drug Users (Landelijk Steunpunt Druggebruikers) known by its own acronym of LSD. It was a two-day conference to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark. My hairs literally stood on end. Could anything be better?

I had worked closely with my late dear friend and colleague Nico Adriaans who had been one of the founders of the Dutch Junkies Union during a period when we were involved in ibogaine research in the Netherlands. The notice of the Copenhagen conference gave me a feeling of going home. The conference was scheduled for October 31 and November 1, 2003, with a celebration of International Drug Users Day (IDUD) on the First of November that had been initially established in 1996. There would then be a day’s break followed by the celebration of the 10th anniversary of BrugerForeningen, the Danish users group. This was the busiest period I had in three years since recovering from leukemia. I was scheduled to attend the California Society of Addiction Medicine (CSAM) conference between October 8 and October 11 where a half a day was scheduled for ibogaine presentations by key researchers in the field, Drs. Stanley D. Glick and Deborah C. Mash as well as, a report by Dr. Dorit Ron who was new to ibogaine research. Additionally, Dr. Jeffrey Kamlet, an associate of Mash’s was to report on clinical results from their St. Kitts facility. I had also registered for a half-day buprenorphine workshop. Presenters in that workshop were Donald R. Wesson, MD, Consultant, CNS Medication Development and Chair, ASAM Committee on Medications Development; Judith Martin, MD, Medical Director, 14th Street Clinic and East Bay Recovery Project, Oakland, CA; Deborah Stephenson, MD, Perinatal Substance Abuse Program, San Jose and; Walter Ling, MD, Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, UCLA.

From November 5 through November 8, Norma Alexander and I were slated to attend the Drug Policy Alliance conference where I had been asked to organize an Ibogaine Roundtable. The Copenhagen conference would fall right before the Drug Policy Alliance conference and Norma and I would have to fly directly in from Europe to New Jersey to attend the DPA opening reception. Was it insane? Could I do it? I thought for a moment and like Caesar before me threw the dice. I would certainly try. This was a very action packed period, as Norma is not only NAMA’s Media Liaison but also, a fellow director and officer of the Dora Weiner Foundation and my wife of 39 years. We would celebrate our 39th anniversary on a twenty-hour stopover in Amsterdam during meetings with colleagues involved in ibogaine research, past, present and future before flying directly to the DPA conference.

I called Joycelyn Woods and told her she had to go to the Copenhagen meeting. Joyce had the flu and was really resisting the idea but, I would not let her alone and finally told her I could most likely get her the money to go by writing five emails on her behalf. Joyce said, “”Go ahead.””

I had met Joergen Kjaer, the President of BF via the internet as he is a participant in the NAMA chapter and affiliates list and immediately emailed him informing him that though we had missed the official deadline for registration that Joyce, Norma and I would like to attend the meeting. Joergen waived the deadline and indicated he would be delighted to have notables such as us attend the conference. I let him know that we were going to try to raise the money to get there and I would have to keep him informed. Joergen got back to Joyce and I informing us that BF would cover our hotel bills if we could get there. For a while it seemed as if Walter Ginter, NAMA’s Vice President would also be able to attend but, personal issues intervened and he was not able to join us, a loss to all of us. It would have been great to have Walter with us. NAMA’s dynamic duo, Walter and Joyce, in Copenhagen! What more could a methadone advocate want? Money from the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT)! But then there is fantasy and there is reality.

The fundraising drive for NAMA was an immediate success. Four of the five donations sought on behalf of NAMA came in. And Dr. Vincent Dole told Joyce it was important for her to go. The Dora Weiner Foundation’s funding drive was slower to reach completion and both organizations had to rely on advance credit card purchases of airline tickets to get best prices. It is amazing how fast a month passes and before we knew it was time to leave for Copenhagen. The flight was cramped but without turbulence and with a fast tailwind behind us we arrived in Copenhagen an hour earlier than expected. We called the Ibsen hotel – without knowing that we missed the special BF airport shuttle service performed in the union’s minibus driven by one of the Dutch leaders Stan Ritzer of “”LSD”” – Stan was in the airport eight times to help the arriving activists from early morning until late evening on the day before the conference.

The Ibsen’s staff http://www.1stcopenhagenhotels.com/ibsen_hotel.html was advised by BF that we would arrive early and therefore acted very cooperatively and let us into rooms quite early that day rather than the normal mid afternoon access. However, they put us in non-smoking rooms, horror of horrors and we switched later that day to smoking rooms that are of course different than injection rooms that were available at BF’s headquarters for those who needed them during the conference. Joyce as promised was given an executive room as President of NAMA. Her first room in the non-smoking section could have slept half of NAMA’s board of Directors or the entire Board if the floor had been used. Norma and I had a comfortable room with a kitchen. I was trying to figure out if Norma and I should bow or curtsy to Joyce as this was Europe but since we were Americans I figured it best to act as usual and simply work Joyce half to death. Some things never change.

Things got exciting the morning of the conference when we were having our continental breakfast at the hotel before heading to BrugerForeningen’s offices when we met NAMA affiliates Allan Joyce and Bill Nelles from the UK and Berne Stalenkrantz from Sweden. For your information a continental breakfast on the continent is quite different than the juice and coffee you get in the US: Juice, Yogurt, choices of wonderful cereals some with fruits and nuts, selections of cheese, ham and wursts, fresh fruit as well as good coffee and a variety of teas. Oh yes, and a magnificent selection of breads and croissants. Joyce found if one asked for a breakfast tray to take to your room it was usually enough for lunch and a light supper as well. And, the quality of that cheese!! Anyway back to business. Berne mentioned he had driven in from Sweden and agreed to drive Joyce, Norma and myself to the conference, a ten minute or 60 Krone taxi drive away were it not for Berne’s help and, it is always better to be with your friends. It gave us the additional time to talk and learn about each other and each other’s organizations. Berne’s Swedish group had rapidly grown to over six hundred members.

I had heard a lot about BF’s complex of twenty-four offices and though we had been invited to take a tour the previous afternoon we were just too tired from the trip from New York to take the tour. After a few wrong turns which took us to dead end streets, Berne found his way to BrugerForeningen’s headquarters and we walked across a cobble stone square to a four storied brick building that was shared with a library among other occupants. BF was on the third floor that was available by a stairway or elevator. We were made immediately at home being offered tea, coffee or juice and a checkroom was available for coats, umbrellas and such.

Formal proceedings did not start until 10:30 in the morning. During the Plenary, Joergen Kjaer, BF’s President and Theo van Dam representing the Dutch National Interest Group of Drug Users welcomed user and treatment activists from Denmark, Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Lithuania, Croatia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. In addition to user activists there was a street lawyer, a street nurse and a few social workers who were involved in drug user advocacy activities. In a move that surprised Joergen he was presented with the Dr. Alderwright Award as a role model in user activism. The award is a beautiful sculpture, symbolic art, and this was the first time it has been awarded to someone outside of the Netherlands.

It was an amazing group. I had told Joergen in email communications that I viewed the Copenhagen conference as the most important of the three that I was scheduled to attend, CSAM and the DPA being the other two. Here was an ability to talk directly to users, to find out what was going on around the world and to share what I considered the legacy of ibogaine with such an esteemed group.

Three workshops were scheduled and were to be repeated during the day. One workshop concerned itself with the value of the internet, Workshop A: Drug User activism in the Digital Age. Lists, bulletin boards and web page organizing and press release concepts were presented and shared. Some of the key web pages noted were encod.org, drugpolicy.org, cedro-uva.org , lsd.nl m-alliance.org.uk and of course methadone.org. The workshop presenters were Ossi Viljakainen of the Finnish Association for a Humane Drug Policy and Eliot Ross Albert of the UK based Methadone Alliance. I was only able to attend two of the three workshops as they were repeated only twice and not three times as had been initially indicated in the agenda. The second workshop was Workshop B : Obstacles and challenges to user organizations, directed towards organizational networking and run by Tommy Larkin from the Union for Improved Services, Communication and Education (UISCE) out of Ireland. Participants were from Finland, Netherlands, Russia, US, Denmark and of course Ireland and most likely other countries that I just do not recall. Most discouraging was the report from Russia during which we were informed that the principal option was prison, no treatment and apparently no needle exchange that was very disappointing as my colleague Joey Tranchina had spent time with the help of a Grant made possible by George Soros to provide such training in that country. There were minor disputes between one Dutch Group and another but at least they were in the same room disputing. That only lasted a brief moment and then it was back to hard discussions of activist growth in Sweden and Finland. The third workshop, Workshop C: Lifting activism to a professional level, conducted by Alan Joyce from the Methadone Alliance – NAMA’s U.K. affiliate, was the one I missed and will have to leave Joyce to report on that.

I was to present on ibogaine during the closing plenary. Participation was originally optional and I anticipated very low attendance until Joergen announced that attendance was obligatory. I must never forget to thank Joergen for that. For without it, at the end of a long day I would have skipped my own presentation if it were possible. In any case it was quite interesting as three persons, one from Netherlands, one from Denmark and one from Croatia were there who had taken ibogaine. More than sixty persons attended the session. There were serious questions from the floor as to safety, dose and availability. I found it interesting that the very active Danish Users group and the most significant seller of iboga alkaloids were both based in Denmark. Possibly, with the assistance of some medical people they might get together and make ibogaine more available. I think Denmark might be right for that. As Joergen had taken a break leaving me the microphone I gave it to Joyce when I was finished and she took care of organizing the rest of the plenary by calling on the workshop organizers to review their workshop discussions. A subtext of discussions had to do with low doses of methadone in the UK and the Netherlands and the utility of prescription heroin to patients who felt incomplete at their available doses of methadone.

The day closed with dinner at a Chinese restaurant but Norma and I were exhausted and Joyce was feverish and suffering silently so we headed back to the hotel. I wish I had had the strength to have gone to dinner as looking at the photographs it must have been a blast.

Day two started at noon with lunch. Joergen you genius. Lunch was good Danish meats and fish and salads for vegetarians. After lunch we all got in a great bus that Norma said must have looked like a bordello on wheels with its red lamps and lace curtains. Not only did the bus have seats that faced each other but, also tables between the seats and was especially air conditioned to allow smoking probably of any product you wished to smoke. Our first stop was to plant a tree at the memorial for deceased drug users. The site was in a small park in central Copenhagen and was an inspiring experience for all of us. Below you will find part of the speech presented by Joergen at the dedication of the memorial in July, 2003. We were fortunate enough to participate in the actual planting of the Paradise-apple tree on November 1st , International Drug Users Day.

From international collaboration, we learned that some user groups had their own memorial sites. Four years ago, we decided to find a public park for a permanent memorial site. We looked, asked here and there, it was not easy, and no location was obvious. The only solution we found was to buy a normal grave, at the local graveyard. That was neither central, nor relevant to our wishes, and the time went by.

Now, last autumn we heard that the place with the 2nd W.W. bunker – (literarily a bit of the open drug scene) was going to be leveled, and rebuilt, as a new “polished” city-garden. The “bunker” for many years served as a common gathering and rests place, a hideout and injection site for many drugs users – some users even took their last injection, and lost their life here.

In the start of March, we had a meeting with the city-garden designer, a very user-friendly person. He instantly liked the idea of a permanent memory site for diseased drug users. He immediately accepted our wishes, and offered to pay the engraving; “Here we memory deceased drug users” in the surrounding cliff wall, and even added to the garden plan a wood-bench for profounder thoughts. BrugerForeningen was permitted to plant a Paradise-apple tree; we will do that at the optimal time, just before the winter.

In an interview on Copenhagen Local Radio last week, I was asked who I thought would use the new memorial site. I replied, “Probably primarily drug users”. Later I revised that belief, because I came to think about, how many friends and relatives, which have had drug-using friends, who left their lives without any chance to say farewell.

Everyone can and may use this memorial site.

I will end thanking each and everyone who came by today – we will meet here again next year.

Joergen Kjaer/president
BrugerForeningen
http://www.brugerforeningen.dk/bfny.nsf/pagesUK/UK.html

After the tree was planted and photo sessions had taken place we boarded the bus and drove past methadone and heroin sales sites on the streets – we passed the Danish parliament and some other sightseeing spots in Copenhagen on the way to Christiania, a sort of free state within Copenhagen where hashish and marijuana may be openly sold unlike the rest of Copenhagen where heroin and methadone are sold furtively in some neighborhoods just like in NYC and elsewhere in the United States. I had not smoked hashish in years but was very interested in the shop after shop each displaying assortments of hashish from Morocco, India, Nepal and Pakistan, as well as Thai-sticks and many other kind of grass from most corners of the globe. One could chose ready rolled joints of hash or grass of varying qualities. I made my way from one establishment to the next informing the proprietors that I was only window-shopping, and curious about the distinctions between their many different products. The salespeople were friendly and had no objections. There was the feeling of an open-air bazaar with vendors also selling postcards, African and Asian clothing as well as a myriad of other wares. Being the big spenders we were we bought a total of ten postcards between the three of us.

Our guided tour around Christiania was scheduled to take two hours but I am glad we arrived a bit late and could only get a one-hour tour – I was somewhat in pain and it was cold and therefore I was glad darkness set in.

Then we were off for a real Surprise, a wonderful dinner at Spiseloppen, a restaurant in Christiania renowned for its international cuisine. Initially I was somewhat suspect as the restaurant was in a rather ordinary brick building hidden away behind an anonymous Door. On entering Spiseloppen we were greeted by the warm wooden interior with great beams supporting the room and on the piano welcoming glasses of champagne waited. We spent some time chatting until the activist volunteer group from BF arrived – they had been busy dishwashing after the lunch and cleaning the BF house. When everyone was gathered we were ushered by our hosts and the restaurant staff to tables where an assortment of distinct wines accompanied each course of our delightful meal. I am uncertain of the vegetarian plates but, the delicately grilled shrimp, a salad appetizer contained the best shrimp I had ever eaten. That was followed by fillet mignon and asparagus wrapped in a slice of Danish bacon. Our desert, a fantastic vanilla mousse with magnificently prepared raspberries concluded the meal.

The gala-dinner ended around 9.30 PM. We were exhausted from the many events of the day and Berne drove us back to the hotel, while the rather amazing bus, described earlier in this report, brought the larger group back to BF where the Bon Voyage party took place replete with a Dutch dj’s music. Some of the participants played electric guitars and other sang along as best they could. It was more than an hour after midnight before the large Dutch contingent gathered in the bus that had brought them from the Netherlands to make their way back to Amsterdam. The party however continued and I was told later that it was after nine o’clock Sunday morning before the last revelers closed BF and went home to hit their bed.

Our Copenhagen adventure closed with the celebration of the BrugerForeningen’s 10th Anniversary. The celebration started with a welcome speech by Joergen, for the occasion now dressed in his sophisticated French-designer-suit. Afterwards Mr. Peter Ege, city doctor of Copenhagen who was the recipient of the previous year’s award spoke as a part of the traditional ceremony of honor, during which Charlotte Fich received the current Users Friend of the Year Award. Mrs. Fich is a pioneer and was Copenhagen’s first street-nurse providing care and information to the active drug using community. This was BF’s seventh award and incidentally the first time the award was presented to a woman. Finally, Job Joris Arnold, director of MDHG – the user union of Amsterdam came to the microphone. Job thanked BF and the audience for the invitation to speak and complimented BrugerForeningen, its busy activists and Joergen, who was now blushing from all the attention.

The award ceremony was followed by a party – wines, draft beer, sandwiches, salads, cookies, and BF’s traditional dessert; fresh, chocolate dipped, strawberries were served. The affair was attended by a number of leading conference participants, representatives from the Danish ministry of Social Affairs, Copenhagen City Council, health community advisors, political supporters of BrugerForeningen including parliamentarian Sophie H. Andersen who is among the young politicians, a Social Democrat, who is willing to listen to the opinion of drug user activists. After she was elected for the Danish parliament in November 2001, she called BF and said, “”Now I am elected to the parliament and have the narcotic speakers role – and I’ve used your many arguments since 1998, so now I want to be updated please, when can I visit BF””? Ms. Anderson currently holds the Health Speakers post in her party and should a Social Democratic government be elected, there is a good chance Sophie Anderson may become Minister of Health. Should this happen, heroin maintenance research and user rooms may very well become a reality in Denmark. Joergen has said, “”She is my favorite and she is so hard working – walks the open drug scene alone – always smiling and good for a warm hug. If all politicians were like her we would not have any problems – but sadly she’s one of 179 – well we have a few who support our wishes – but no one is as uncontaminated of political power as Sophie””.

The BrugerForeningen volunteers in charge of the coatroom made a count of check stubs and determined that there were 249 guests, which according to Joergen was a new anniversary record – but it was also BF’s 10th Anniversary.

The Invitational Conference on Drug User Activism allowed NAMA participants to meet directly with NAMA’s International Affiliates to discuss maters of drug policy and financing across national boundaries. NAMA Affiliates were quite surprised at the lack of financial support NAMA receives from the US government as many of our Affiliates are supported by their governments. It was suggested during discussions that NAMA establish annual dues for affiliates. One Affiliate indicated they might be able to provide dues or an annual donation of $1,000.00 to NAMA. All of our affiliates were surprised that NAMA has no salaried positions and is yet able to conduct its business that included in many cases the support and training that allowed NAMA Affiliates to be established internationally while at the same time NAMA was acting to advocate on behalf of patients and educate both patients and treatment professionals in the United States. Additionally, the conference allowed NAMA’s team to meet with representatives of advocacy organizations not currently affiliated with NAMA and discuss the possibility of their becoming NAMA Affiliates. Needless to say, there is a lot of work to still be done.

This is only a brief report. I highly recommend participation in future conferences on drug user activism that may take place in Denmark or the Netherlands as important learning experiences for all NAMA chapters and affiliates and thank our hosting organizations in Denmark and the Netherlands for providing this opportunity. My participation was only possible due to my review of the NAMA web page Methadone.org and suggest chapters, affiliates, medication assisted therapy advocates and patients review the web page on a regular basis.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the editorial assistance of Norma Alexander, Joergen Kjaer and Joycelyn S. Woods.