At Change Grow Live, we have had a busy summer attending events to provide our support to people, and tackling the stigma surrounding drug and alcohol use. We joined:
- Latitude Festival
- ARTS festival
- Kings Lynn PRIDE
- Gorleston Police Rough Sleeping Engagement Event
- Happisburgh Village Hall Engagement Event
- Early Intervention Garden Party
- WOW bus
- Overdose Awareness Day events
Our team delivered vital harm reduction advice around substances known as new synthetic opioids, including nitazenes, which are increasingly being found in non-opiate drugs, such as ketamine and cocaine. Due to the high risk posed by these contaminated drugs, we spent some time informing people about the dangers and promoting our free self-testing nitazene strips. If you would like a self-testing kit, you can pick on up at your local Change Grow Live hub.
The test works very similarly to COVID or pregnancy tests. The strip is pre-loaded with ‘control particles’ and upon dipping it into the opioid-based solution, the water carries these particles along with the drug towards the testing lines. If a line appears on the testing strip, this indicates that there is no nitazene present. If there is no line - there are nitazenes.
We helped people understand the signs of overdose and what to do if someone overdoses. This included sharing information about naloxone kits - naloxone is a drug that can reverse the effects of opioid overdose, including in the case of drugs which have been contaminated with synthetic opioids.
If you are interested in working with us to tackle the stigma of substance misuse in the community and need to know more about nitazenes, please email [email protected] or call 01603 514 096.