Nurse BethK (She/her)

Follow me on 🦋instead

[Nurse BethK (She/her) @BethKlingenberg]

Harm reduction is really about meeting people where they are at and helping them reduce their risk. For all types of situations. It’s not our place to judge people or tell them what to do or how to do it. Other people’s lives are as complex and nuanced as each of ours.

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

Vaccination is one of the greatest scientific achievement in the history of humankind.

Genius and beautiful in concept and has saved millions of lives.

[Nurse BethK (She/her) @BethKlingenberg]

Sometimes all the deaths you thought you worked through catch up with you all on one night. #vicarioustrauma

[Danielle Smith ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎(Parody) @ABDanielSmith]

I just want to thank everyone who voted conservative in the last election for helping the UCP create authoritarianism in Alberta!

I'd also like to thank the freedom crowd for remaining quiet while we actively strip away the rights and freedoms you claim to love so much.

Read:
https://t.co/0NQjrBSQgy
#abpoli @susanspbx

[Nurse BethK (She/her) @BethKlingenberg]

Why do these people get to keep their jobs? Does integrity exist? Are human rights violations not punishable?

[Jeremy Appel @JeremyAppel1025]

I can't help but wonder how many cops there are like this whom we don't know about.

https://t.co/gfSgeM6r4c

[Kim Siever @kim_siever]

Today is National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.

Have you read the 94 calls to action?

Next year will mark 10 years since they were first published.

Take some time today to read more from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

https://t.co/bweWU64Pyu

[Nurse BethK (She/her) @BethKlingenberg]

“When a political party is looking for easy votes, it does not matter if drug users die.”

[Andrew Boozary MD @drandrewb]

“Like taking a life preserver away from an actively drowning person because you strongly prefer they learn how to swim" -@thekeenanwire

https://t.co/oE88BGeZj0

[Bike Riding Pinko @PaulSeale2]

None of these agencies has been funded to end homelessness. None. They are funded to relieve the effects of homelessness and to help individuals find housing. Which they do. The job of ending endemic policy-driven homelessness belongs to government. This is a massive self-own.

[Nurse BethK (She/her) @BethKlingenberg]

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[guyfelicella🇨🇦🍁 @guyfelicella]

I don't support harm reduction over recovery. And I don’t support recovery over harm reduction.

I support helping people and giving them all the options & alternatives that can improve their lives.

EVERYONE’S JOURNEY IS DIFFERENT.

I’m someone who needed all the tools available to survive addiction and homelessness that lasted over 2 decades. Now I have over 11 years of abstinence recovery.

Not everyone’s path will follow mine. I KNOW THAT!
“All the tools” means people have more than one path available to stability and/or recovery.

I find it interesting that I continue to get attacked by a small group of abstinence-recovery-only people who try to discredit me and diminish my recovery, just because I also support harm reduction.

HERE’S THE THING: Recovery is about principles over personalities, and about carrying a message of hope to those who still struggle.

That's what I do. If you have a problem with that, maybe you should focus on your own journey (and character) instead of worrying about mine!

#WeDoRecover #AllTheTools

[Duncan Kinney @duncankinney]

endless piles of money for dale mcfee's brute squad but we couldn't possibly afford an effective program where nurses and outreach workers prevent people from dying in the streets. https://t.co/sBSOtBHyvZ

[Nurse BethK (She/her) @BethKlingenberg]

“The opposite of harm reduction is not treatment. The opposite of harm reduction is harm.”
Harm reduction and treatment can exist in the same world. But hard reduction seeks to reduce harm and treatment seeks to reduce use. They have different purposes.

[guyfelicella🇨🇦🍁 @guyfelicella]

Sharing info on this platform is both a blessing and a curse.

I like it because I can reach many people quickly. I don’t like it because nuance is hard to communicate here (eg. check out replies whenever I compare unregulated drugs to alcohol, a regulated drug 🤯)

If you are GENUINELY interested in understanding and solving the toxic drug crisis, NUANCE IS EVERYTHING.

This op-ed, “How I changed my perspective on the drug poisoning crisis” by Dr. Thomas Piggott — medical officer of health and CEO of Peterborough Public Health — is a master class in nuance.

If your best contribution to this debate is “Don’t do drugs dummy,” please scroll on by. That’s not a nuanced opinion. This is not for you.

But if you’re genuinely trying to understand the complexities of the crisis we’re up against, Dr. Piggott’s perspective is worth considering.

“Like the unregulated drug landscape, the medical literature has taken another 180 from the teaching I received as a medical student. Today, evidence clearly supports life-saving effects of harm reduction interventions, including overdose prevention sites, “safer supply,” drug testing and decriminalization so that we can approach the use of drugs from a health perspective, not push the use dangerously underground as a criminalization approach does.”

YES. We need all the things 👆👆👆!

Read his op-ed here 🔗:https://t.co/tx4AteYYS2

#ToxicDrugCrisis #CANpoli #AllTheTools

[guyfelicella🇨🇦🍁 @guyfelicella]

OK, I get why “toxic drug crisis” vs. “addictions crisis” is a little confusing. Let’s break it down. 🧵

Addiction has always been part of the human condition. It’s not a new phenomenon, and in BC, the rate of new addictions has actually been DROPPING for 7 years. Yet the rate of brain injuries & deaths from drug poisoning has almost doubled in that time.

That’s because every time a new, more potent opioid or sedative appears in the unregulated drug supply, the number of deaths spikes. Along with it, the number of non-fatal overdoses, the number of calls to 911, the number of patients in hospital, the number of people who need social supports and services, ALSO CLIMBS.

So the reason it’s a crisis — a public health EMERGENCY — is not because of a change in addictions, it’s because of CONSTANT CHANGES in the drug supply.

Earlier this month I gave testimony to the federal Standing Committee on Health. This was my key message:

ADDICTIONS are not driving this crisis. TOXIC DRUGS are. And unless policymakers in Ottawa and the provinces can get real about the cause of the crisis, we have no hope of finding solutions that will work.

Building more rehab capacity to treat an “addictions crisis” won’t address the cause of the problem. It doesn’t stop or reduce the increasing toxicity of the unregulated drug supply that Canadians continue to use for reasons from pain management, to trauma, to experimentation, AND addiction.

And now, Ottawa is suddenly seeing an “alarming” new substance in the city’s unregulated street supply, which brings the problem home to those legislators in Ottawa.

Which is why I hate to say I told you so. I really do … I hate how this problem continues to get worse while decision makers keep looking at THE WRONG THINGS. #Toxicdrugcrisis #cdnpoli #harmreduction #recovery

[Nora Loreto @NoLore]

If you kill 17 young hockey players, and you are brown, you will serve time in jail and still be deported after.

But if you kill 17 people who are already at the ends of their life, and you are white, you won't even be charged.

[Taylor McNallie ☕ @TaylorMcNallie]

Deeply infuriated and filled with sadness after today's release. Though "justified" is always expected, it never get easier.

We deserve so much better than this.

Latjor deserved so much better than this.

[Hon. Thomas A. Lukaszuk @LukaszukAB]

“Documents show police chiefs used police resources to help elect UCP.”

This is a very troubling and recurring theme that must be thoroughly investigated. Political collusion in police is catastrophic for the rule of law and democracy.

#ableg #Yeg #Yyc https://t.co/ShLwzrC3oA

[Taylor McNallie ☕ @TaylorMcNallie]

"One thing that you don't know until you're homeless is that you can't stop moving. If you try to sit anywhere, and I mean anywhere - 'you guys, it's time to move along.'"

Not one moment of peace.

https://t.co/aa4B67qjGb