Making research come alive

Tim Bingham BA , MBACP

Who am I 1. General Practitioner attitudes, experiences and perspectives on the

provision of methadone maintenance treatment

2. Family Experiences of Home and Self Detoxification Processes”.

3. A Rapid Assessment Research (RAR) and a mapping exercise to estimate levels of drug and alcohol related public nuisance during business and out of hours in the area between Christchurch and the IFSC and Parnell Square to St Stephens Green

4. An exploratory study of injecting mephedrone use in Ireland

5. Experiences surrounding Methadone for the Dublin North East Task Force

6. Silk Road’, The virtual drug marketplace: a single case study of user

7. Surfing the Silk Road’: An ethno-pharmacological study of users’ experiences.

Picture tells a story

Man in Amsterdam Picture

Break into groups and list descriptive words to describe the following pictures

Why research

Burton Blatt (1981) wrote, "A person is defined by the stories he tells about himself as well as by the stories that are told about him." Too often, stories are told about people with disabilities and the emphasis is on the voice of the professional, not the voice of the person (Biklen, 1988; Biklen & Duchan, 1994; Blatt, 1981; Bogdan & Taylor, 1976, 1994; Kliewer & Biklen, 1996).

Bogdan and Biklen (1998) describe giving voice as "empowering people to be heard who might otherwise remain silent"

How evidence informs practice

I was clean at the time, until that came out. I was clean for a good year, I heard it was like coke, coke was always my drug of choice, everyone was telling me its exactly like coke, twice as strong do you know what I mean, I just said ah ‘feck it’. I wasn’t worried if I was searched going down the street, for me it was just like coke. . . and half the price of coke

Some of the stuff I used to take used to crystalise in the works, the more you heat you put to it, the more crystallize it gets, if you didn’t get it into you before so many seconds it wouldcrystallize. Always cooked up with citric, sometimes you could put it into the barrel and shake it, sometimes if I was desperate, I would use puddle water.

The first time I used it, I snorted it, it burnt the nose off me, literally felt the burning sensation going up into your head, that’s what turned me off snorting it, then I started injecting

I nearly lost my leg over it . . I’d say that’s what caused my leg to swell up, cause because I ended up getting a clot on me groinand an infection, an abscess on my groin, doctors told me I was lucky to come in, if you hadn’t of [have] come in, in the next few days, you would have lost your leg

Family Experiences of Home and Self Detoxification Processes”

When I started taking the benzo’s, I was waking up groggy in the morning, then I was using cocaine to counteract that, so I could function during the day, and then smoking cannabis to take the edge off that, and then more benzo’s at night, and that was the cycle for ages, probably for six or seven months.’

I knew myself it was going to be hell coming off it, once the money ran out for the alcohol, and once the alcohol would not stay down in my stomach, it was that or turn to tablets…what I have heard is that coming off the tablets is bad as well, I am now drinking every day of the week.’

‘The first time I ever witnessed a benzo fit was with one of my sons. I left him on the ground and ran out of the house, because I didn't know what was happening, I knew in my head, he was not epileptic, I knew this was more than a epileptic fit. I had no idea what's happening to him. I didn't know whether to put in him the recovery position or what to do, so I ran out of the house and left him there and rang an ambulance, because I thought he was dying. It wasn't until I went down to the hospital with him, I explained he was withdrawing from medication, that's when they thought it was a benzo fit.’

Perception“The main problem are the businesses that sell alcohol, simply if their staff are aware of who they are selling it, they can stop a hell of a lot of problems happening outside their shops, alcohol is not brought into town , it is bought in here , it is sold in here and it is drank in here, and that's what's causing the problems. The places that have liquor licenses should be more responsible, it’s not the pubs, it is the off licenses and agents that sell it.”

“When they are dealing the prescription drugs, they have tried numerous ways to deal with that, but it is the legislation that’s ultimately standing in their way.”

“The Luas is a fantastic service, but for bringing problems into the north inner city has a huge detrimental effect. The dealers don't need to bring cars into town, they have free transport everywhere, it’s a transient population and with the volumes of people, it’s a comfortable area. Especially with the clinics around they know their customers will always be here.”

Street drinking 16 (64%)

Loitering 15 (60%)

Drug dealing 10 (40%)

Drug using 9 (36%)

Street injecting 2 (8%)

Begging 18 (72%)

Noisy and aggressive behaviours 14 (18%)

Drug related litter 18 (72%)

None 0

Visual Methods

Visual methods contributed to the field based ‘documentary’, with the digital photographs used to interpret and illustrate the research mapping, and also in order to ‘visualise’ the verbal accounts of participant experiences and perspectives (Henley, 1998; Dovey et al., 2001; Ranard; 2002; Malins et al., 2006; Bourgois and Schonberg, 2009; Parkin and Coomber, 2009)

This alternative method contributes to a wider understanding of the inter relationships between policy, practice and enforcement, drug users and specific drug scenes in the research area (Parkin and Coomber, 2009).

Support the establishment of a pilot project of a Medically Supervised Injecting Centre to enable the gathering of evidence on the effectiveness on this initiative to reduce harm for drug users engaged in risky behaviour (HSE)

Staying Safe study – an international social research project the virus

Create change through research

Research problems – Everyone will have a specific knowledge or interest in an area

Has similar research been conducted before ?

Can we use the same model of intervention ?

In groups of two discuss an area or interest that you would like to research

Explain why you have chosen this topic ?

Methodology ?

And finally ……

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.Zora Neale Hurston

Tim Bingham Email info@timbingham.ie Tel 0863893530