 People think I'm very, very aggressive. It's passion, and it's anger. It's anger of being angry, of losing loved ones to stigma, to waiting lists, to no treatment, to not enough methadone. That's stigma. It's international, I wish you would dive into it, and we will hear about it when our eyes are on your faces. For us who are our patients, for us who are our disease, that's stigma. We are not sick. The reason I take methadone is I can't take any other form of heroin. For me, it is a disease. I feel it is a disease. Because I can't manage my life without it. I can't manage my life without methadone, or heroin, or something. I do not feel sick only because I administer some kind of substance to my body. When I started to use heroin the second time in my life, I knew exactly what I was going to do, and it was a choice that I made. Being a heroin user does not make you sick. It's a society that makes you sick. It's a society that makes you believe that you are sick. You are falling for the brainwash that you are giving out. And if you stop taking that heroin, what happens, Astrid? Well, then as you sick for a couple of days, then I recover again. That's okay. If I want to go, then I got to take the bed. And do you know why that happens? I'm not on methadone, and I don't know why that happens. Yeah, because drugs are illegal. Because I cannot buy my drink about why your body goes into withdrawal when you don't have any medicines. Yeah, but it has been passed within three days. I mean, then it is over. Then I can go back to normal. What I realize is that if we are people who are experts in methadone, which process drugs, we must all be right, in fact. We can't, partners can't be wrong with the other half of you, right? I think we're all right in this. When we start taking drugs, I don't believe there is a disease. There is no disease. There's nothing going on. We choose to take a drug. It may be because we're sad. It may be because we're curious. It may be because we're happy. It may be a million and one things. And it's harrowing. It may be because we're in a lot of pain. But after a period of time, it most of our experiences that actually we have to take it to not get sick. We live in a world where pharmaceutical industries and other political interests actually dominate. We have very little power indeed. So at this point in our history, I think we do need to use that tactic to get at least our very basic treatment needs met. Thank you. It's not about life science. It's about life circumstances. If I understand perfectly, the tactical thing about calling it a disease at this point in our history, as I've already said, but it's not a disease, because for example, harrowing, the disease is prohibition. In society, there are people who can have drugs, for example, in some Indian villages or Pakistani villages. They don't know this addiction called addiction. They don't even know physical dependence. What happens is if they want to stop using opiates, they make a huge part of opiate tea and they drink it every day, adding water, one cup of water. And by the end of the week or the second week, they don't go through any withdrawal or stuff. So it's not that we don't have to go through all the sicknesses that we go. If we go through it, it causes prohibition. I prescribed harrowing from a pity. Don't go, just keep up with my locals. And yeah, I pick up at my local chemist and it's made my life very manageable. There's nothing unmanageable about just being able to go to the chemist, round the corner from home, pick up my herbs and have it at my leisure. There are always good people who can give it, give it, give it, give it, have it from farmers that they don't, they will want more and more and they are safe, okay? And they are safe because we don't have a tradition of using it. We lost our roots. How to use stimulants or psychedelic substances. And I think what we should do like an input is to start tradition. Good examples should be our new tradition because we lost, like a Western civilization, we have lost our roots. The main thing is to help people who are suffering from being addicts and from being stigmatized and suffering from the prohibition. When you're a patient, you can get your medication for free. And a lot of people use drugs, not everyone. No, okay, in our country. And a lot of people use drugs, use it because they've had a bad childhood and they're suffering from something. And we're given medication and they feel like a whole human being. Like certainly what we're doing in Australia in these groups is not trying to help people who are suffering, but we're working to empower drug users to have a voice, to work together, to fight stigma, to fight drug laws. The main thing is that we are citizens. It doesn't matter if we are citizens, we are whatever. The first thing is that we are citizens. We're the right and the left. You know, I doubt very much whether this little bundle on my left here will not experiment with drugs. It would be very nice to know that when she starts to explore psychoactive chemicals, she is not going to do it, but she can poison herself, overdose inadvertently, where she can get arrested, end up in jail, be abused by police officers, or be raped by police officers. How can we use these psychoactive chemicals? These psychoactive chemicals are very easy to use. This has always gone on. So the real use is that I think when we as a collective experience what happens when people are psychoactive? We have to find an answer. It's just to be proud of who you are, no matter what you use, no matter what you put in your body. If you are kind of human being, it can be responsible for us, you have the right to be who you are. My name is Theo Van Dam. I'm 66 years old right now, and I've been working for many years for drug user organizations, and I initiated the Drug User Organization Network in the Netherlands. I think every movement needs to have a kind of formal leader, and I know they called me for a long time the chief, and some people call me right now the founding father of user movement, but it's good to have a leader who can handle all kind of people around him in a respectful way. Nico Adrians, he was the founder from the Rotterdam-Junkie Union, and he was the first, I think, worldwide who really put attention on the situation of drug users, and he found a good partner in Hans Visser, the preacher from St. Paul's Church, and Nico, you really had a good attitude to make clear what drug users needed, the right to get methadone, the right to get other medication. The Rotterdam-Junkie Union died, in fact, at the moment that he took some money, had a big party with friends, took a lot of heroin and cocaine, and they had a great party, and then it was finished. Years later, a man I knew, he came to me and said, Theo, you are always free in your way of thinking, so I asked for money at the ministry to do HIV prevention for drug users, for injecting drug users. He said, you have to do the job. And I said, I need to have two professional field workers, and it had to be drug users, and they had to be well paid, and they were really shocked, drug users paying, maybe they will buy heroin for it, yeah, could be, but I don't know how people spend their money at the ministry, maybe they go to our girls. They agree, we had only one rule, no dealing. If they were dealing, the job was over for them. In one month, one of the two guys already was in prison because of dealing drugs, so we have to change our policy a bit, and yeah, that's the way how it started. In the beginning, it was always focusing on methadone, that we get discussion with the nurses who hang out the methadone, or the medical doctor who prescribed the methadone, and then we could, most of the time, we could get any success with that. We were firstly only focusing on harm reduction, on HIV prevention, but I find out that people are really getting sick of only talking about be safe, do safe, and then I find out it's better to have a broader view on the project, and then we start to fight for the interest of users. I remember in the first years, we sometimes met girls who said, if I have a fight with a policeman, you don't give me a fight. And later on, we said, if we heard that story, we'd just go to the chief of police, and we have done that, I think, two times. And later on, we never heard about this kind of situations again, so that's really changed because they knew we were focusing on that kind of things. Sometimes drug users are beaten by police in the early years, in the beginning. Right now, sometimes they get you hard, but they don't beat you anymore. So things like that have really changed during the time. We were already a quite well-respected organization, what's called LSD, a national drug users' national interest group. During the years in the Netherlands, we had 24 local groups, and we met each other every two months, and I got the money to it, so people can come together, and we have beautiful meetings, and that's how the network in the Netherlands started, and then we got contacts all over Europe during the years, and people ask us, can you support us? Can you train us how to start a user union? My name is Tony van Montfort. I'm 53 years old, and I'm a member of EuroInput, who also sent me to the input board, and I work in Antwerp now in a low threshold center, where is the needle exchange? I'm the CEO of Undam, and Undam from the LSD. They were the union. They connected all the drug user groups in Holland. He's our godfather for many of us, and they heard that we were organizing ourselves, and they came to Antwerp to offer their help. Many of us were a bit T.O.'s kids, in a way. Joep Omen, known from MCOT, longtime activist, also was there to help us, and these people, you know, they really helped to organize ourselves, because we were a bunch of chaotic users. We started Needle Patrol in Antwerp. We went to organizations of the neighborhood committees, and we said, hello, we are the users, but we have to live together side by side, so if you have problems with needles, we come to pick them up, of if there are users in your cellars, call us, so maybe we can talk with them, and we explain them also about drug consumption rooms. I'm Miguel, my organization. I see this self-support and harm reduction organization, that organization born in 1992. The reference at that time was the junky bounds of Rotterdam, and Astute really was one of the main, we can say, actors of the building of the harm reduction in France. The fight for methadone program, for needle exchange, that was the first fight. Then after, for buprenorphine, for construction rooms, and the first construction room was opened by Astute in Montpellier. We came to a conclusion we would like to make a kind of course for drug use, how to inject safe. In the first time, we were just acting how to do it, and we had a lot of fun, we made, even we made a beautiful diploma, a more document that they could show. I'm, I got an official document that I'm a safe user. Later on, I made it more professional, I think, and we even had moments that I could organize some heroin cocaine. I asked the police station, can I do a training course for you? Because our guys, girls, would like to show you how it really works in practice. And they said, yeah, we are interested in that. I asked 100 euros for that training session. And we bought from that money the heroin cocaine and users were using in front of police their dope. And it was really great to do so. We had a lot of fun about that. I was born in Amsterdam, and here's where I used a long time heroin, cocaine, and due to that it's forbidden, it was a very hectic life. Yeah, I was also born here in Amsterdam, and I started to use drugs when I was 18, and I started to use heroin with my girlfriend. And I started as a volunteer by the drugs union, the MDFG, as a volunteer. And the last six years I've paid job there. Eventually I come to the MDFG as to come to rest, you know, to use there and have coffee. And eventually I enjoyed being there and I saw what possibilities were. There must have been a place where drugs users can come and fight against the prohibition of drugs. If I would be born again, I think I would do the same thing. Absolutely. We invite our people from the national parliament to have a meeting with us and to talk about legalization and about harm reduction. I wrote a very polite letter to invite them and they wrote me back, sorry, we are too busy to come to you and no one, but good luck in your meeting. And I said, okay, thank you. If you're interested as you say, tell me when you have time for us, we come to you, to the national parliament. And yeah, that's how the way it works in the Netherlands, the politicians are very polite and they have to say, yes, you're welcome. And the first time we went there, I asked people, please dress yourself, take care that you don't stink. And I will never forget one of the guys from Utrecht. His eyes were looking like this, red hair and he was walking around in the blue suit. He got from the Salvation Army with gyms on his feet. Six sizes too big for him, but he was beautiful and we went there at the national parliament and then we asked for, can we smoke? And he said, yes, of course we can smoke. We can have a break and we go to the restaurant and one part of the restaurant we were allowed to smoke and then everybody took his foil and put on a very small amount of heroin and the man from the national government, he was looking. I didn't mean that, but we had a lot of fun and later on he called me in the night or in the evening and he said, Teo, never do that to me again. And he said, okay, I know this was not what you meant by smoking, but I need to make clear to you that they don't change like animals if they take some heroin. We went to the church and asked them, what do you do for us? Many of us are buried anonymous. So they give a woman priest who is now and she's still in function. Everybody knows now with funerals is possible. People, users and homeless people are at least buried in a nice way. We bring hepatitis C on the map. We organized the first session with the Hep C doctor and users in the panel. We have now buddies who are paid. They support the buddies, the persons in the Hep C treatment. We bring their medication daily. We bring them to their appointments. A huge situation was that we had, we called it a tunnel. It was under the central station and it was really in the media almost every day like a kind of no-go area. But if you knew the right people, you can get in and have a lot of fun. But it was a terrible situation. People were shitting there, were peeing there, a lot of violence. But I got a lot of respect from all those people and in that time the national railway company already said we would like to get all those fucking junkies out of the station and we will spend a lot of money on that. I went to my small office in Utrecht and I told the guys from now on this is a drug consumption room as long as it take. Our local policeman, he knew about it and sometimes he came in, he puts his cap on the wall and drink coffee, have some words and went away, no problem at all. When we started this drug consumption room, the illegal one, I asked people, do we need rules? And there was one guy, he said, just behave normal. I said, write it down. And he put it on our billboard, just behave normal. And that were our rules. And it worked really for a year without any problem. Because of this year of experiment, they allowed me to do so that they could organize the official ones. Up, up, up. Go on, go on, go on. Go on. Is it hot? Yeah, it's hot. I don't think it's hot. We had a period that there really were hunting junkies. If you came 20 years ago in Amsterdam and you get out of the central station, you saw the whole scene hanging around, moving around to the Red Line District. Look, it's for you. No, I've never seen it. Not at all. Maybe it's for you. It was totally mixed of sex and drugs and rock and roll. And now it's almost a sleeping area. And that's what happened all over the Netherlands. And I think it's mostly based on the drug consumption rooms we got, inherent prescription. And I think especially the drug consumption rooms, yeah, they bring a lot of peace into the city. And on the other hand, if you go to Amsterdam, you will miss the scene as well. It was nice to walk around the Red Line District to meet all kinds of people. And it was always a nice crew hanging around. I think we were in a lucky position that we could have some good fundings. And I always said, I need a good payment. My colleagues need to have a good payment at a local level. If there is money, it has to be a good payment because it's a serious job. I'm so happy that people are organising themselves, that they get support right now more and more by professionals because we need to cooperate from my point of view. And yeah, I feel sad about the thing that sometimes users are talking very negative about the politician makers. And of course they are not always with us. But if you call them fascists, they will not give you any money. So sometimes you need to act with them, to explain them that there is a need that drug users can organise themselves and give them an official status. There are not really active drug user organisations anymore in the Netherlands because it's quite good to live here as a drug user. You get your medication, you get attention, they will take care of your money. You have a house, you have a place where you can take drugs. So it's here. And I'm not telling you it's because of what I did, but it's part of it. The main issue now is to end the prohibition. Because a fight against HIV, we don't it. Harm reduction allowed that 65% of the new infection of HIV in the past belongs to the drug user community. Now it's less than 5%, near two or three. So we make a good job. What is the problem with drugs now? The problem is the drug now is just to end with this image that because you are using a product, you are a criminal. France is one of the most prohibitive countries in Europe. You have 23,000 people go to jail each year just for using drugs, using drugs. The result is that France has the highest rate of consumer drugs, especially cannabis among young people. The French government, they always say the drug. As they put together cannabis, heroin, the drug. Whereas if there is just one, and that's all, just with that, you understand that they don't understand nothing about this subject. I've got a record. It's very hard to apply for other jobs. Yeah, it affects my life completely. Being drove in prison, living on the streets. And it's still, unfortunately, still too many people are in that situation. I lost my nephew, I lost my big love. I lost my niece, I lost my uncles. And now more people died because they're finished. You know, they're 40, they're 50, and they have a body of someone of 70. There are not so many left. And that's very sad because that could have been avoided. It's a difficult thing. Too many people died for it. I lost practically all of my loved ones. But when I see now what's going on in Africa, if you see the many user groups organizing themselves, trained and getting advice from us, from people like Matt Soutwell, Mickey Webb, Happy Yassin, Kassim, in all these countries, that makes me very happy and optimistic. I think we still have a long way to go, but we're getting somewhere. It's not that important taking drugs or not. And if you choose to take it, I always said, enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, give it to me. That's... I have the right to use, I have the right to do with my body what I like. And I'm not a pusher who will say, you need to take drugs to feel happy. No, it's just... If you take it, do it safe. I think we still need to have a legalization of all kinds of drugs. You get it out of the hands of all those big criminals who make millions. And a lot of good prevention and realistic prevention, and then you can legalize it. And not... For me, it's just ridiculous, like our coffee shops, they're not allowed to buy it, but they are allowed to sell it. I really don't understand that. So I think just legalize it and inform people about all effects of what kind of drugs you take. This is the effect. These are the positive things and these are the negative things. Just like we do with alcohol, with tobacco, if we like to drink a beer, I need to pay for it. That's quite simple and you can do the same with all kinds of drugs. And I always promise myself, I will not die before everything is legalized, but I'm afraid that they will fuck me.