Tag Archives: harm reduction

Harm Reduction, News

Benzo Conversion Tool Updates and Discussion

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Around two weeks ago, we released two new web-based harm reduction tools, aimed particularly around helping users make better dosage choices in unclear situations. The first is a benzodiazepine dosage convertor, and the second a DXM dosage calculator. The tools have already proven popular on Facebook and Reddit, being shared relatively widely.

We’ve also been very pleased with the overwhelmingly positive response to these tools online, particularly the constructive feedback that has allowed us to quickly improve upon the quality of our released tools.

One of the major issues arising from formulaic benzodiazepine conversion is that while these drugs share a class, their effect profiles differ quite a bit. They can range between being consciously almost imperceptible at higher doses (sometimes reported with diclazepam), or intensely hypnotic at lower doses (e.g. flunitrazepam).

While benzodiazepines have different effect profiles, most strike some balance between being anxiolytic, hypnotic, and muscle relaxant. Frequently, people will be quick to measure a benzo’s ‘effectiveness’ by its psychoactive or ‘noticeable’ effects, which are most likely to be its hypnotic effects. This will, however, vary depending on your reason for taking it: a highly anxiolytic benzo is likely to feel most ‘effective’ to a person wishing to abort a panic attack, the muscle relaxant for the user experiencing muscle discomfort, etc.

This, and that drug effects of themselves are highly subjective, means there are some immanent limitations on how accurate a benzo dosage conversion can be. However, they remain useful in the case of benzos with similar effect profiles (or at least a similarity where it concerns a sought-after quality), and for tapering use – since we have used standard base equivalencies to diazepam provided by medical texts to derive comparisons.

After discussing these limitations with users, we have revamped the benzo conversion tool to maximise usability and minimise the possibility for misunderstandings.

  • We’ve added a big red notice pointing out that equivalent doses may be inaccurate for larger doses of benzos with different effect profiles.
  • Added drug search and aliases (brand names, generic names, and slang).
  • Inclusion of cards to compare information about the drugs subject to conversion side-by-side, including base dosage, duration, and effect profile information from our API. Using this comparison, you can evaluate differences in the drug’s effect profile, and see its dose ranges when considered as an individual.

Meanwhile, we’ve also added some clarification text to our DXM tool, and some extra information on potential adulterants that certain formulations may contain. We hope that these changes address the primary concerns with our new tools, and allow for maximum usefulness by prospective users with a minimal risk for misleading results.

We’re also working on additional features for this and other tools, which we look forward to telling you about soon!

Update: Just a reminder that we’re still trying to make contact with HR orgs that use our resources! You can do that here.

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News

Recent News and Updates from TripSit

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While it has been some time since we’ve written an update on our blog, TripSit itself has by no means been dormant! In this post, I hope to give an overview of a few major updates we’ve been working on, and an idea of what you can expect from us as 2018 continues. We also post more frequent updates on Twitter and Facebook.

Towards the end of the last year, we were invited to present at several harm reduction conferences in Europe, through which we were excited to find that many harm reduction organisations are actively using our resources. We had many productive discussions with these organisations, and hope to work with them more closely in future. To build on this network, we’re currently trying to compile a list of harm reduction organisations using our resources, or who are interested in working with us. In doing this, we can more easily gain feedback and maintain closer relationships with those relying on our services. For this purpose, we’ve placed several adverts around our websites, but if you work for such an organisation, you can let us know about you here.

We have also put a lot of work into improving our online services, publishing two new harm reduction tools and making a major update to our factsheets service.

We’ve created a DXM calculator, inspired by the now defunct tool that used to be available on DarkRidge. This page allows users to easily calculate their DXM doses based on various preparations of DXM-containing medicines, and their weight. Over the coming weeks, we will be expanding this service to include a greater variety of products, and then add harm reduction information concerning dangerous and undesirable additives.

Our other new tool provides a calculator for dosage equivalencies between benzodiazepine drugs. This is possible because the strength of most benzos are measured in terms of their potency in relation to the ‘gold-standard’ of 10mg diazepam. While the base calculator is now finished, work will continue to provide coverage for a greater number of benzodiazepine drugs, and to provide additional advice based on the differing properties of the various drugs in the class: their tendency towards hypnosis, analgesia, anxiolysis, etc.

We’ve also recently rolled out changes to our online chat system, making it easier for people to get help and to improve the general user experience. Most obviously, our web client received a major update, primarily visible through its entirely redesigned user interface. We’d like to thank prawnsalad and the other developers working on Kiwiirc for their stellar software, which helps support what we do.

After being asked many times by willing potential volunteers how to get involved with tripsitting, we decided to streamline the process. Now, when browsing to our chat page, you can see a ‘Here to Help’ button, which will allow you to drop into the support channels in a supporting role.

We have also made a few load-bearing changes to our assistance infrastructure – provisioning more channels, and balancing users between them. These changes were prompted by a large influx of users following coverage of our network from a popular YouTube personality. While these initially presented a challenge for the community both in dealing with the increased load from legitimate users and trolls, it allowed us to develop a more robust and scalable tripsitting service, able to better serve a larger amount of people concurrently as we grow.

In the coming months, we hope to continue developing our existing resources and finding opportunities for realising new ideas. We’re hoping to place a particular focus, this year, on forging relationships with other harm reduction organisations, and investigating how we can all work together to improve continuity of care, and to provide a more cohesive harm reduction infrastructure worldwide.

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IRC, News

TripSit Chat to become 18+ Only

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Since its inception, TripSit has aimed to be an inclusive community for those interested in drugs and beyond. After much discussion, we have decided to change our policy regarding young people using the network, and as such we will no longer allow members under the age of 18 to socialise on our network. 

We believe that anyone should be able to receive support for drug related issues, so we we will keep #tripsit open to anyone requiring assistance, so long as they meet our 13+ rule as required by the COPA act. However, every other channel on the network, including channels not owned by TripSit, will become 18+ only.

Part of the reason for this change is that people under the age of 18 are still very much in development, and we believe that TripSit at large is a place children and young teenagers should not be exposed to directly. However, they will still have access to TripSit’s resources through our #tripsit and #sanctuary channels, as well as our online resources on the Wiki and factsheets. 

While we believe that young-adults should be able to directly seek support from TripSit, it is not wise for them to be influenced by the wider drug-related community until a later age. Furthermore, in order to encourage a productive drug-tolerant community, we must allow our members to have the confidence that what they say will not be negatively influencing young people who have not had the same education and experience they do.

Starting today, 2016-04-11, TripSit is entering the announcement period before the new policy takes effect. Exactly one month from now, 2016-05-11, users under 18 will no longer be able to make use of the TripSit channels, with the exception of #tripsit and #sanctuary. Community members under the age will have the chance to say goodbye and get the contact information of anyone they want to keep in touch with, and will be welcome back to the network once we can be assured they are over the age limit. 

During the announcement period, we will be making this policy change obvious to the people who use our network. A full list of the changes will be made available on this wiki document.

After the announcment period, the policy change will start to be enforced, and any user found under the limit going forward will be removed. This rule will not apply retroactively, as in we will not remove users under the age of 18 until there is evidence that they are currently under 18 after 2016-05-11. 

Users who are looking to get unbanned can view the unban procedure here. In short, members will need to wait until we can be assured they are over the age limit, or they will need to provide us proof of age as described in the guide. 

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Harm Reduction, News

New Drug Combinations Release

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2pointoAfter the initial release of our drug combinations resource over a year ago, its resultant poster has proven popular among the drug community, and has even been displayed by several harm reduction organisations at festivals.

Following feedback from users and ideas from our own team, we have worked over the past few months to improve our combinations resources and now we are pleased to announce the release of the second version of our combination chart, as well as the availability of combinations information directly on our factsheets.

Alongside the new version of the poster, which we have modified to be more easily printable and readable, we have revised a lot of the categorisations to make the actual safety of a particular drug combination clearer for the user.

We’ve done this firstly by splitting the ‘Unsafe’ category into two new categories ‘Caution’ and ‘Unsafe,’ which gives a more clear indication as to how likely bodily harm is from a regular dose of a particular combination; whether a combination should be avoided entirely or if it’s more a matter of the combination making the user uncomfortable with a smaller risk of actual harm. We have also changed a few of the safety categorisations based on new research.

Secondly, we have annotated many of our combinations with information on exactly why the combination is considered dangerous, with more elucidation as to the specific drugs to be avoided when comparing larger drug categories (such as opioids).

Alongside the combinations chart and its associated Wiki page, we have also made the information directly accessible for individual drugs from the ‘interactions’ section of drug profiles on our factsheets website, where you can for example on the DOM page see that interactions of note are annotated with specific information about the combination. The factsheets website has also undergone some additional usability improvements which come with this release.

We are continuing to develop our combinations database, along with our other resources, focusing on clarity and accuracy. Currently we are working on building a central normalised database of drug effects and references, using these to directly annotate our drug database and then create new and better tools for users to access harm reduction information (however note that many references are already available in free-text on the combinations Wiki page).

We hope the second release of our combinations resources increases their capacity to help users make safer and more informed decisions around drug use. If you notice a discrepancy, an entry you feel is incorrect or have a great idea, we are happy to receive feedback via mail to [email protected] or by using the contact form on this site.

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Drug Profile, Harm Reduction

Use of Poppers

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rush-poppers-pwd-3-packPoppers is the name given to a group of inhalant drugs, popularly used in the party and festival scene. They most commonly comprise of Amyl Nitrite, though other chemicals of the Alkyl Nitrite family are sometimes substituted.

Historically, poppers gained their initial popularity and lasting reputation, as many drugs do, from the gay club scene, where men would use the dilatory and muscle relaxant effects to make fornication easier and enhance sexual pleasure.

Presently, poppers are available worldwide, and particularly in the UK they are frequently sold by salesmen outside of festivals and large shows, capitalising on their semi-legal status – they are often sold as ‘liquid incense.’

Today, reports have emerged about people at the Parklife festival requiring medical attention after drinking poppers, apparently believing they should be used like shots of alcohol. Alkyl Nitrites are indeed potentially deadly when ingested, and this should always be avoided. If you drink poppers, seek medical attention immediately.

Poppers are most safely used by placing the bottle of the substance near the nose and inhaling for a maximum of five seconds. Within seconds, users will generally experience a rushing sensation throughout their body with a sense of warmth and euphoria which will last a maximum of 3-5 minutes, with the primary effects passing within one minute. The euphoria is often described as being synergistic with other drugs such as MDMA or 2c-b.

The effects occur as a result of the body’s blood pressure being lowered quickly, resulting in blood rushing to the heart and brain, causing light-headedness and an increase in heart rate. With increased doses (generally, amount of time inhaled) users may potentially become unconscious or enter a coma (though it is slightly difficult to reach this point with small bottles which are generally sold to users). Poppers should also be avoided by those with heart problems.

Poppers aren’t believed to be particularly addictive, though the short length of effect may cause users to redose several times, which can cause headaches. Frequent redosing should be avoided, taking breaks to avoid stressing the cardiovascular system, and ensuring that effects aren’t compounded between doses.

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