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Tackling volatile substance abuse in Scotland
a training course for the social care workforce

Course content: Assessment

Case study (user categories) — an experimental user

'John' is 16 years old, and lives in Brighton with his parents. At 14, he began to experiment briefly with sniffing gas, enjoying the way it made him feel:

[It] makes your head go giddy … it makes you feel funny

Unusually, he tended to take it on his own. However, after less than two months, John stopped using gas. A number of factors seem to have contributed to this decision. Primary amongst these was the reaction of his friends, which was often hostile:

Some of my friends stopped talking to me … they thought it was dirty and they weren't talking to me. One of my mates said ‘I think you're stupid, why do you want to do that?’

Conversely, he also noticed the negative health effects that gas had on other friends who were using:

One of my mates was doing it every day for like a year, and his chest was bright green. It was horrible.

When he also noticed himself turning blue after using gas, it provided the final motivation to stop using altogether. Notably, many of John’s objections to gas are VSA-specific, rather than drug use in general. Indeed, he continues to smoke cannabis something which he believes “everyone tries at some time.”

However, in thinking about his time sniffing gas, John comments:

I look back and think why did I do it?

MORI 2006

Case study (user categories) — an accelerator

Frank is 28 years old, and lives in Plymouth. He spent his early years in local authority care, where a culture of VSA was commonplace amongst residents. He didn't worry about getting caught It's not like they're my parents and first started to use solvents with a friend.

It started off with petrol. My friend said, ‘Do you want a sniff of this’, so I was just sniffing it and at first it didn’t do anything for me but he told me to carry on, so I kept going and then I went on this mad trip. But when I came round I felt crap and my mouth tasted of petrol … so I went onto gas after that.

Frank was unaware of the potential health dangers involved I didn't know anything could go wrong with it and his decision to stop using volatile substances was more related to the fact that they gave him headaches and that he preferred the effects of other substances.

I discovered drink and drugs at the time; I just moved on … it's not a strong enough buzz now [VSA], you're always chasing a stronger buzz and when you do a solvent it's like a mild trip.

The temptation to use is still with him, however:

If there’s a tin of gas there, then I’ll always dab a bit on.

MORI 2006

Case study (user categories) — a problematic user

Mark is in his late 30s, originally from Glasgow, but has been sleeping rough on the streets of London for the past four years. He was brought up in local authority care, and first experimented with sniffing glue at a very young age probably around 10 or 12 with his brother. VSA was endemic in the care home where he was brought up, particularly glue sniffing. He graduated from sniffing glue to harder drug use, and has been a heroin and crack user for 'years'.

He continues to sniff glue (usually when he doesn't have the money to pay dealers for stronger drugs) though he thinks that:

It’s disgusting. You wake up covered with glue, all over your trousers and shoes, and you don't know where it came from.

He has been in contact with a variety of public and charitable agencies over the years, many of whom have offered help with his drug abuse. He hopes to start a methadone course within the next six weeks. However, in the context of his continued homelessness, heroin and crack abuse and mental health problems, Mark does not consider stopping VSA to be a great priority.

MORI 2006

Assessment — key points

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