A GROUP of recovering drug addicts has urged MPs to put more cash into rehabilitation services to get users clean and move away from giving out methadone for extended periods.
Drug addicts can stay on heroin replacement methadone for 30 years “walking around like zombies”, former users told Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee.
One former addict, who was on methadone “on and off” for 19 years, called for the decriminalisation of drugs, arguing countries like Portugal and Canada had been successful with such an approach.
The committee is probing the issue in a bid to tackle the rate of drug deaths in Scotland, which is the highest in Europe.
In 2017, 934 people in Scotland lost their lives because of drugs, with the death toll for 2018 expected to exceed 1000 when statistics are published.
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How devolving drug policy could cut Scotland's disproportionate death rateSharon Webster from Dundee used methadone for three years after taking heroin for seven years – she told MPs that when she approached social services for help with her drug problem her children were removed from her.
“There’s people who have been on methadone since they were 15, 30 years now, there’s two generations in each family are either on methadone or a chaotic user,” she said.
She added: “I’ve not got a great opinion of methadone. I think done right, for a very short period time, it could work but I think there is a lot more and better ways to help somebody get past that stage.
“I took control of my detox, I was on methadone for three years. I was only a very low dosage compared to some people and reduced over two weeks.
“I was advised not to do it, I was told it would kill me but I did it.”
Scott Ferguson, 45, from Stirling, told how he started abusing solvents at the age of 12 or 13, leading to a spiral of “chaotic” behaviour that resulted in him going into a children’s home.
There he started taking cannabis, telling the MPs: “Then I was off and running on the drugs scene.”
He added: “I think Portugal, Canada, they went down a very good route that they are decriminalising a lot of the drugs and it is working.
“People that are carrying small amounts of personal-use drugs on them, it needs to be decriminalised because it is taking money out of the healthcare pot, it is taking money out of the criminal justice pot, putting them in prison all the time.
“I think they need to be put into programmes, I think they need to be put into recovery-based stuff.”
Meanwhile 26-year-old Hanna Snow from Aberdeen told how she went “cold turkey” on methadone herself by getting a family member to lock her in a house while she withdrew from the drug.
Snow, who is now studying for a degree, told the MPs that users are “walking around like zombies” thinking it is OK.
“Open more rehab centres, put them into the rehab centres, detox them, show them that they can live a live without drugs, they can have happiness and feelings and emotion and joy,” she said.
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