The Female Experience
By Jenny Valentish and Rosemaree Miller, NADA on
Over the last decade, less than 40% of Australian clients receiving treatment for their own substance use identified as female. On the surface, this uneven ratio of female to male clients could suggest that more men than women experience problematic substance use in Australia. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that there are differences in the experience of problematic substance use for individuals who are female or male.² Moreover, an individual’s gender³, may also impact the trajectory of their recovery from problematic substance use.
In her 2017 book, Woman of substances, Jenny Valentish explores the female experience of AOD use. In this research-memoir hybrid, Jenny artfully intertwines discussion of her own experiences...
Everything Harder Than Everyone Else
By Jenny Valentish on
“Part of ultrarunning is a desire to be different. And for the drug addict, too, there is a deep need to separate ourselves from the crowd."
Where does hedonism end and endurance begin? That was the question that rose to the surface of the excitingly murky book I was writing, Everything Harder Than Everyone Else. A follow-up to my addiction memoir, Woman of Substances, this new book looked at some of the key drivers of addictive behavior—impulsivity, agitation, a death wish desire to drive the body into the ground—and the ways in which some people channeled them into extreme pursuits.
I interviewed a bare-knuckle boxer, a deathmatch wrestler, a flesh-hook suspension artist, a porn star-turned-MMA fighter, and more; all of them what I came...
Why Victoria should review its response to drugs and decriminalise usage
By Fiona Patten on
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the (alcohol) prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. Albert Einstein, 1921
I know enough to be sure that what we now have is badly broken, ineffective, and even counterproductive to the harm minimisation aims of Australia’s national illicit drugs policy. Mick Palmer, 2017, a former Australian Federal Police commissioner.
Almost a century apart, one of the greatest intellects in human history and one of Australia’s leading law-enforcers expressed the same truth.
Halfway between those two evidence-based statements, the so-called “War on Drugs” was launched.
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