0:00

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0:14

Hello there and welcome to the Inside

0:16

Health Podcast with me, James Gallagher. Do

0:19

you always know what's in the drugs

0:21

that you're taking? Not at all.

0:23

When you're doing that stuff, you act inside,

0:26

you just carry on attacking it, you don't think about what's in the stuff. You

0:28

plan, rush and ruin it with your life, don't you?

0:36

Hello

0:36

there and welcome to Inside Health. Today,

0:40

we're getting a rare insight into

0:42

the world of illegal drugs and the parts

0:44

of the NHS that have to face that

0:46

reality and treat addiction.

0:50

We're also on the trail of a new street drug called xylosine. Now,

0:53

you may have seen headlines describing it

0:56

as the flesh-eating zombie drug or

0:58

reports of the huge problems that xylosine

1:00

being mixed with illegal drugs has been

1:03

causing in the United States. Or

1:05

maybe of the first death here

1:07

in the UK, Carl Warburton's body was

1:09

found containing a mix of xylosine,

1:12

heroin, fentanyl and other drugs. He

1:15

lived in Solihull in the West Midlands

1:17

and that's where we start our journey.

1:23

So, I've come now to Solihull Integrated

1:25

Addiction Services and it's

1:28

just on a quiet housing estate. It

1:31

might as well be a GP surgery from what we can tell, but

1:33

let's head in.

1:37

Our service users tend to start

1:39

coming in later in the morning and it comes

1:41

alive a bit as the day goes on. Hello

1:44

James, welcome to SICE. I'm Simon,

1:46

I'm the programme lead here and we're happy

1:48

to have you here to show you around. Well Simon, thanks so much for having us

1:51

in. Shall we have the tour? Yeah,

1:53

yeah, let's have a walk around and show you what

1:55

we do here. It's a service we're really proud of.

1:59

So we choose a kitchen, which is part

2:02

of our dropping facilities. We can have a look

2:04

inside. I'm sure you can hear the noise in the background

2:07

of one or two people arriving. They come in here, make

2:09

teas and coffees for themselves, which is obviously

2:12

a safe space for them to do. And then they take

2:15

them in there and have a chat about what the

2:17

day is about for them. Where to next? Let's

2:19

have a wander, actually, into the dropping, because I can

2:21

hear some people in there and they may be happy just

2:23

to say hello and you can see what's going

2:25

on. OK. Welcome

2:28

to the dropping. This is

2:29

open every day for everybody to

2:32

come in and meet up, share stories.

2:35

Good morning, everybody. Good morning. I

2:37

felt like a teacher there for a minute. Homework

2:40

is due later today, everyone. Just to remind

2:42

you about that. If anybody's happy just to say

2:44

hello, then

2:45

please feel free. Hello,

2:48

I'm Mark. I

2:51

work here at Sias. I'm in

2:53

recovery myself and I've

2:55

used Sias as a service for many years.

2:58

Now it's beautiful to be on the other side of the

3:00

fence. And, yeah, every day is

3:02

a good day. So what

3:04

were you taking two years ago? I'm 50

3:07

now and I'm kind of lucky that I made it

3:09

to 50 because I've took many

3:11

substances over the years. I started with party

3:14

drugs and then

3:15

just smoked cannabis all through my 20s and 30s and

3:18

then picked up cocaine, crack

3:21

and heroin. Always

3:24

because I just didn't like myself, I was uncomfortable

3:26

in my own skin and I always wanted

3:28

to take something to make me feel a bit

3:30

better. I ended up in a lot

3:32

more pain. And what impact did that have on

3:35

friends, family? I

3:38

broke my mum. She didn't know whether she was going to get

3:40

a phone call on a daily basis after

3:42

police or somebody said hello had died.

3:45

So I was a prolific

3:48

offender between the age of 30 and 40. I

3:50

was in and out of prison and now I

3:53

have to challenge everything. You're

3:56

looking well today. Yeah, you didn't see me over 22

3:58

months ago. ago and I looked a

4:00

bit different then. We lose hope, we lose

4:02

our self-worth and before

4:05

I got into recovery I kind of wanted to

4:07

die on a daily basis and I was

4:10

killing myself slowly with substances.

4:20

So what was your reaction when you first

4:22

saw the headlines about psiloxene in the

4:25

UK? It's not unusual for other substances

4:27

to be found in heroin. Unfortunately

4:31

and occasionally there are substances

4:34

that we're not privy to, we

4:36

don't know, that's been caught

4:38

with and we often sometimes

4:40

the last people to know about that. So as

4:42

soon as we know that something is in, something circulating,

4:45

something unusual, something dangerous

4:47

in the mix, then we send

4:50

out alerts. We've

4:50

talked to our service users, we have

4:52

a campaign on social media alerting people

4:55

but it's frightening and it's frightening for some of

4:57

our service users as well. It must have felt close

4:59

to home though. It was something that we

5:01

hadn't heard about and it was a new

5:04

substance that had come into this area

5:06

for sure and it does red flag

5:08

everywhere. All the services are wow,

5:10

wow, what's this, what's this, are we going to have an epidemic,

5:13

is it going to be caught with everything but thankfully

5:15

we've not come across it again since. How

5:18

challenging is it for you when what's in

5:20

the drugs changes over time? There's

5:22

several challenges. Firstly you never know

5:25

what's on the market. It's always been caught

5:27

with other substances, heroin, benzos,

5:29

chalk, rat poison and

5:32

you know there's a health risk around

5:34

that. The advice we give especially if you

5:36

inject into test a small little bit first before

5:38

you go on to use just to see how the effect

5:41

is but often

5:43

some people won't do that, they'll just

5:45

go straight ahead and that's when it causes

5:47

us lots of problems.

5:59

So come now. to the place that detected

6:01

xylazine for the first time in the UK

6:03

and that's Hartlands Hospital here in Birmingham

6:06

and again to meet Dr. Alex Lawson in

6:08

his toxicology lab. Hello

6:13

James welcome to the toxicology department

6:15

at Birmingham Hartlands Hospital. It's been a bit of a labyrinth

6:18

to get here we're not at the glitzy front

6:20

end of the hospital are we? No pathology is

6:22

always at the back of the hospital hiding away from everyone

6:24

else. Can we go inside? Of course let's go. Okay

6:28

James here's your lab coat. Hope it fits.

6:29

Thank you. Oh it's a roomy one.

6:33

Okay good to go. So

6:38

this is the toxicology laboratory as

6:40

you can see there's lots of people here preparing samples for

6:42

analysis. So Alex I have brought

6:44

you a gift it's freshly prepared

6:47

urine samples I mean

6:49

like this is not Christmas. No

6:51

but it's very kind of you I think I might give it to someone

6:54

else for a fair.

6:54

Oh gosh. Is that your urine?

6:57

It's mine. Come on Alice this is your job. Okay

7:00

you just don't normally have to make eye contact with everybody who

7:02

brings the sample I'm guessing. Okay can I leave

7:04

that with you?

7:05

Yeah I hope you've not done anything naughty.

7:07

It'll be a career-ending moment if I had. Yeah

7:09

I think so. Okay James that'll take about 15 minutes

7:12

to prepare and then we'll come back and get the results.

7:16

So here we are in the automated laboratory. It

7:18

looks really high-tech I mean it is a huge

7:20

room. It doesn't

7:22

like one of these Japanese sushi bars with kind

7:24

of like trays moving along

7:26

and up and down. So we have around 3,000-4,000 blood samples

7:29

from GPs a day

7:31

and around a thousand to two thousand hospital samples

7:33

come through this laboratory alone in one day.

7:35

So Alice who I don't think expected

7:37

to be looking at my urine today is currently

7:40

analyzing what process are you going through

7:42

to figure out what I've been consuming. The

7:44

urine should just dilute it with a buffer.

7:46

It's going to separate out anything

7:48

that's in your urine based on certain properties

7:50

of the chemicals that are in there. Following that it will

7:52

go on to the mass spectrometer and the mass spectrometer

7:54

works like a giant scale so it's going to give you a very

7:57

accurate weight of whatever those compounds

7:59

are. It will also... so fragment or break

8:01

apart those chemicals to give you information on their structure.

8:03

And by combining those aspects of the analysis,

8:06

we're able to very accurately identify drugs,

8:09

hormones, poisons. And when you're looking

8:11

at that, are you looking at the raw,

8:13

original drug? Our library of drugs

8:15

we look for is around 2,000 drugs and metabolites,

8:17

so the breakdown products of drugs. Okay, so

8:20

how worried should I be? I mean, how

8:23

big a picture of my

8:25

body do you get from doing one of these analyses?

8:27

It's only looking for drugs and drug metabolites. So

8:30

you should be absolutely fine as long as it's just a cup

8:32

of coffee you've taken before submitting your sample. Ah,

8:34

tea, tea rather than coffee, but okay,

8:37

that's fine. This leads us on to the

8:39

question of xylosine. How did you end

8:41

up discovering that in

8:43

someone's sample? We do a standard analysis, so

8:46

we put those blood and urine samples down the same

8:48

system, your sample's going down, and

8:50

the library of drugs we screen against contains

8:52

xylosine. The reason it contains xylosine is

8:55

because we keep on top of trends

8:57

that are going on around the world. All

8:59

around the world.

8:59

Xylosine was a particular threat in America,

9:02

so we made sure we added that drug to our library.

9:05

So when the sample came in that was positive for xylosine,

9:07

we were already prepared. Even so, it

9:09

was pretty unexpected finding, so it needed our

9:11

really experienced lab staff to be able to identify

9:14

that xylosine in a case where fentanyl

9:16

or heroin may be present could be really, really significant.

9:19

Once you've detected xylosine, Alex, what

9:21

happens then? So what we do

9:23

is, because it would be a new drug, we'd write

9:25

our report, send it to the coroner. We would

9:27

also inform the coroner directly that something

9:29

new has occurred, and then that would prompt

9:32

alert to various different authorities like the police,

9:34

like the crime agency to investigate whether

9:36

or not this is a single instance or this is part

9:38

of a wider picture that may be going on across the country.

9:40

How often do you get something that novel?

9:43

It happens more frequently, you think. We

9:45

probably detect consistently two

9:48

or three emerging drugs a year. We're always

9:50

on the lookout for what the new drug threat is

9:52

going to be. Is that the same for every lab in

9:54

the UK? It's a real patchwork of what

9:58

can and can't be detected around the country.

9:59

absolutely welcome a more joined-up

10:02

approach to enable to identify these things in

10:04

real time. Shall we go have a look at my sample and hope

10:06

it's as boring as boring can be? Let's go back

10:08

to Top Scology. This is

10:10

the Noisier Lab. It's the Noisier Lab and lots of gas

10:13

generators and machines. Hello

10:15

again. Hello. Are

10:16

you nervous? No, I'm way

10:18

too boring to be nervous. Alex

10:21

is set out of computers staring at my results I think. Enjoy!

10:25

So this is the moment of truth Alex, what can you

10:27

tell? The main things we found in your

10:29

sample were some caffeine. That would

10:31

be my 10 cups of Tia Day addiction. We

10:33

also found some

10:36

paracetamol. I was feeling a bit head

10:38

achy. And we also found some theobromine

10:40

which is a... What's theobromine? Theobromine

10:42

is a breakdown product from chocolate.

10:46

Okay, you have a pretty

10:48

good idea of what my day was yesterday. That's right,

10:50

so chocolate, caffeine and paracetamol. Sounds like

10:52

a pretty good day. And

10:54

you

10:54

sat in this seat right here the first time

10:57

Zylosine pinged. This very seat, yes.

11:00

It was exciting but also concerning.

11:02

You know, when we see a new drug as a scientist

11:04

and this gets excited because we're seeing something new. But

11:07

obviously once you see these drugs that can be

11:09

so toxic, we do get concerned that this could

11:11

be the start of something in the UK

11:13

which we haven't seen before. Shall we chat a little bit more somewhere

11:16

quieter because it sounds like a steam train in here

11:18

at times. Why

11:21

is it important to do these tests to

11:23

find out if there

11:24

are new drugs? Zylosine

11:27

is quite an important one to know about

11:29

because it doesn't work like an opioid. But

11:31

it is also often found mixed

11:34

with opioids. So if you give an antidote

11:36

to an opioid overdose, something like Naloxone, that

11:38

antidote won't work on Zylosine. So what you find

11:40

in here is kind of important for

11:42

ambulance crews and doctors elsewhere

11:45

in this hospital? Absolutely. So on Zylosine

11:47

itself, how worried should we be? Zylosine hasn't

11:49

proliferated like it has in America so

11:51

far. We've had around four or five cases in the last

11:53

year. But Zylosine

11:54

is one of a number of emerging

11:57

threats, certainly to people who are taking

11:59

heroin.

11:59

We are seeing lots of novel

12:02

opioids which have really really high potency

12:05

and those are in heroin, those are in people buying

12:07

prescribed medication off the internet. And then these facilities

12:10

become really important because this is where

12:12

the first intelligence as to what's happening really

12:14

comes from. It is really hard to find

12:16

a new drug unless we have some indication

12:19

that there could be something new involved

12:21

in a certain case and that does rely on

12:24

us getting information from the coroner, from clinical

12:26

teams, from the police. There might be huge numbers of automated

12:28

machines in here but there is a fair

12:29

bit of human detective work. That's

12:32

absolutely right, yes. Well

12:36

that's the science of how you spot

12:38

a new street drug but now we are going to head back

12:40

to Solly Hall Integrated Addiction Services

12:43

to find out more about the help they

12:45

offer.

12:46

How do you get involved in the

12:48

drug use?

12:53

We have probably got about 1,200 people

12:55

in service, probably about 300 people

12:58

we are prescribing to so that would be around

13:00

opiates. Some of those

13:02

will be alcohol so anti-gravity medication

13:05

or prescribing isn't just the only thing. There

13:07

has to be a psychosocial or

13:09

psychological intervention that goes alongside

13:11

that. So at the moment what we

13:14

are implementing here is a trauma

13:16

informed service that addresses childhood

13:19

trauma or other traumas. We have had

13:21

veterans here as well. In the drop in room

13:23

there are loads of tables and chairs,

13:26

big pool table, a

13:28

pile of board games, books, computers

13:31

and like an art station. My children

13:33

would love the amount of legovers in this corner. And

13:36

right here a bunch of tea and

13:38

coffee making facilities so this is just a space

13:41

that people can come. You

13:44

are perched on it so I did want to ask how important is

13:46

the pool table? All of these are important.

13:49

We even have a quiz on a Friday so it's trying

13:52

to bring back these types

13:53

of activities that people did or

13:56

as I said introduced them to fill

13:58

the time. Just as if you are very envious.

13:59

There

14:02

is a clinical side obviously because

14:04

there is a medical side to

14:06

this but there is a human there's a

14:08

human side and that's and

14:10

often people forget that that you're dealing with

14:13

with with other humans not

14:15

very NHSE but we are pretty good

14:17

at it.

14:18

Do

14:20

you just come into the women's

14:22

group because it's got a lot of people in

14:25

attendance. Hi I'm Fiona and I'm

14:27

a peer mentor at SCIAS. So

14:30

this is the women's group it's

14:32

a safe space for us

14:34

to be open and honest about

14:38

our struggles and

14:41

we can sort of help each other. I

14:43

was a hairdresser boy trade so there was lots of

14:45

partying and stuff and it was more sort

14:47

of binge drinking and then

14:49

I progressed on

14:53

to substances then. I

14:55

think there's a massive stigma attached

14:58

to addiction for women

15:00

especially with children. You know

15:03

we should be able to stop for our children. I

15:05

think it's finally sort of like surrendering

15:09

and saying I can't

15:11

do this anymore I can't do this on my own.

15:14

I need help and getting

15:16

the help that I needed. I talk

15:18

so openly about it because I know

15:20

there's a lot of women suffering out there. Society

15:23

expects you to work

15:25

full time,

15:25

be a mum, run a house and if you

15:27

struggle you're a

15:29

failure. And is there a challenge

15:32

around empathy for

15:34

people that abuse drugs? People often think

15:36

oh it's a life choice, it's a lifestyle

15:39

or I'll get up one morning and I'll try heroin

15:41

or I drink a load of alcohol

15:43

till I'm ill. But

15:45

obviously it masks various problems

15:48

for people and as you know opiates

15:50

is a very strong pain kill. It doesn't just

15:52

numb physical pain, it numbs mental

15:55

pain as well and if people are in distress there

15:57

it's an easy way for them to. sort

16:00

of forget all that pain and trouble

16:02

you're let into people's lives here and that

16:05

and that itself is a privilege. We

16:07

don't talk about it, it's not out in the open enough

16:09

but there is help there and

16:12

we can and should talk more

16:14

about it.

16:23

I was scared the first time I went to prison but

16:26

that was more why I getting clean. How long have you been

16:29

in recovery? I've been clean now

16:31

for nearly 22 months. How

16:34

easy was it to go from a user

16:37

to being completely clean? Was I carry

16:39

out a dog or try and

16:41

get clean? It was a deal or die at that

16:43

point. A deal or die, 100% yeah. Can

16:45

it be hard to get help when you

16:47

know lots of people don't care?

16:50

You know people judge people who take drugs

16:52

without

16:53

you know they figure there's a human being

16:55

involved in all of it. I think there's a lot

16:58

more sympathy now and empathy because

17:01

a lot more people have got a lot more

17:03

understanding about addiction and

17:05

they know how right it is in

17:08

the UK. But when I was using

17:10

I think I was in that much shame and the power

17:12

that drugs has over you, you

17:14

carry on doing stuff that's shameful and

17:17

just because drugs has got that much of a grip on

17:19

you, I still had a conscience. Somewhere

17:23

in me I've got

17:23

some good. That

17:27

was the only way my mum had stuck on for all

17:29

the hours. I'd put her through a misery, blah blah.

17:32

She'd never give a pup.

17:42

So far on Inside Health we've met the team

17:45

that detected xylazine for the first time

17:47

in the UK and visited

17:49

a drug treatment service in

17:52

Solley Hole. I found that quite powerful

17:54

and emotional. But now it's time for us to leave

17:57

the West Midlands because we're heading to King's

17:59

College.

17:59

London to meet a group that analyse

18:02

the deaths from drug abuse in the UK.

18:09

Hi

18:12

James, thanks for coming to King's

18:14

College London today. My name is Dr

18:16

Caroline Copeland and I'm a senior

18:18

lecturer in pharmacology and toxicology.

18:21

So Caroline,

18:23

you've brought me into a really quite cramped

18:25

space with shelving all up one

18:28

wall and a bit of the other one. Just with

18:30

box after box after box after box I can see through

18:32

the tiny little handles that it's just filled with paperwork.

18:35

So what is it?

18:37

So these boxes contain records

18:40

of the drug related deaths which have happened in this

18:42

country since 1997.

18:47

These are reports on

18:49

what is the MPSAD form, the National

18:52

Program on Substance Abuse Deaths form that

18:54

gets filled in from the coroner records

18:57

that they send to us.

18:57

And this is just a massive board of paper.

18:59

Is each sheet of A4 in here

19:02

a death? Yeah, so probably a couple of sheets

19:04

per death but we can see from the case number

19:06

on the box we've got about 4,000 cases

19:08

in here.

19:09

And 4,000 in every one of these boxes?

19:11

Give or take. If this was a graveyard

19:14

it would be huge. It would. I mean

19:16

you've got tens of thousands of dead people in here.

19:18

Yeah and it's,

19:22

sorry, yeah, yeah, it's what I'm trying

19:24

to stop from just continuing

19:27

to pile up. And until

19:29

we have some real help for these people

19:33

this archive is just going to continue

19:35

to get bigger. Are we allowed to open

19:37

them? Yeah, yeah, let's have a look. So

19:39

this is a gentleman who was 38

19:42

at the time of his death

19:49

and we can see that he was

19:51

living in a homeless shelter. He's

19:54

been enrolled on a methadone program

19:57

so is seeking

19:59

help. They were found by

20:02

staff doing a welfare check. It's

20:05

a very sad

20:08

slice of life in here, isn't it?

20:11

Yeah, I mean, but it's real life and it's

20:13

what's happening, whether or not people want to acknowledge

20:15

it or not, but I'm trying to. Do

20:17

these boxes tell a story

20:20

as well about the

20:22

changing drugs in this country?

20:23

Yes, so we've seen a big explosion

20:26

in the number of what are called novel psychoactive

20:29

substances since about 2010

20:32

and xylazine being one of them. To

20:34

know about these drugs, you have to test for

20:36

them. So yes, we do get reports of them,

20:39

but is every death tested for

20:41

these new substances? No. So how

20:43

do we really know the extent of their harms? Right,

20:46

well, this is such a small room. Let's get out

20:48

of here and we can talk about xylazine

20:50

more in my office. This

20:54

is the pharmacy department. So

20:56

these are old pharmacy

20:59

jars. Karen, explain for me why it took

21:01

so long from the death

21:04

in kind of like early 2022 until

21:07

it arrived in media reports earlier

21:09

this year.

21:10

So after the death occurred, the coroner

21:12

in Birmingham did investigate the

21:15

case fairly quickly. It was reported to us

21:17

in August, but because we get hundreds

21:19

of reports each month, we

21:21

didn't get to it until November.

21:24

We wrote up the case report fairly quickly,

21:27

but then it took a long time

21:29

for it to actually be published in May

21:31

of this year, one year later. And

21:34

it's worrisome because if this had been reported

21:36

more fully, more quickly,

21:38

it could have helped other people who

21:41

have come to harm from using this drug,

21:43

but it just wasn't known about. And then there are

21:45

a huge number of headlines, nearly

21:47

all of them involving the phrase zombie drug kind

21:49

of like, oh, I

21:52

think you're sharp intake of breath properly

21:54

answered my question.

21:55

It's incredibly dehumanizing. Describing

21:58

a living person as a zombie is that you've them off

22:00

already. I can see how it's got the

22:02

name, this drug causes sedation,

22:04

it causes these horrible skin ulcers,

22:07

but it's not a nice description

22:10

and it's not a description that's

22:12

going to encourage people to try and help

22:15

these people and think of them as humans.

22:17

And why has xylosine kind of

22:19

emerged? It's much more

22:22

common in the US drug supply

22:24

at the moment than it is in the UK, although it is expanding

22:27

in the UK. And in the US,

22:30

it's found in combination with

22:33

heroin and fentanyl. And

22:36

that's because it's becoming

22:38

increasingly difficult to traffic heroin into

22:41

the US. And so in order

22:43

to try and recreate the heroin

22:46

experience, dealers have

22:48

resulted to creating essentially a cocktail

22:50

with the fentanyl and

22:52

the xylosine. How much more dangerous is the

22:55

cocktail compared with taking heroin,

22:57

which isn't something we would tend to think of as being remotely

23:00

safe in the first place?

23:01

Well, xylosine mixed with fentanyl

23:04

was declared an emerging threat to the

23:06

United States by the White House in April

23:08

of this year. And I've heard quotes

23:11

of

23:12

politicians and harm

23:15

prevention people in the US saying that they wish

23:17

they had a heroin problem, because

23:19

the xylosine problem is so much worse.

23:21

It's quite something to say that, isn't

23:23

it? Yeah, I mean, wishing you want a heroin problem

23:25

just demonstrates how

23:29

tragic the xylosine problem

23:31

has become. Why do we need to know what

23:33

drugs people are taking? Well, we need

23:35

to know so we can help these

23:37

people to the best of

23:40

our abilities in terms of health care. People

23:42

need to know what they're taking. And people

23:45

need to know what someone has taken. And

23:48

without knowing that information, we can't provide

23:50

the health care that's needed.

23:51

What kind of needs to change? So we

23:53

need to increase accessibility

23:56

to testing for the people that use the drugs

23:58

so they know what they're taking.

23:59

for health care professionals

24:02

so they know how to respond to either

24:04

an acute overdose or the chronic

24:06

skin ulcers and for

24:09

coroners and pathologists

24:11

to know to request even that

24:13

these tests need to be done because

24:15

only then will we understand the full scale

24:18

of the problem.

24:19

I know some people will be listening to this programme

24:22

thinking, well, that's

24:24

their fault. That's their choice. Those

24:27

are the chances they take. So

24:30

I don't like the term

24:32

recreational drug abuse. I think very

24:34

little of drug

24:37

use is done for pure

24:39

recreation. Most people resort

24:41

to taking drugs

24:42

to try and cope with the realities of life,

24:45

maybe trauma or

24:47

abuse that they've had to experience. And

24:51

we need to be addressing the underlying

24:53

reasons for drug use to really

24:56

control the drug problem

24:58

that we have in this country.

25:00

Like, does it weigh down on you? Your

25:02

research field is looking at that kind of information

25:04

all the time. You're reading details

25:08

of one of the most intimate moments of

25:11

somebody's life, which is their death.

25:14

And that can be in really tragic

25:17

circumstances. We just have to think about

25:20

what

25:21

good can we learn from

25:23

these people's deaths to try and stop

25:26

these type of circumstances happening again.

25:28

Well, we do have a response from the Department

25:30

of Health and Social Care about the topics we've

25:32

been discussing on Inside Health, saying

25:35

that any death is a tragedy and passing on

25:37

their sympathies to the friends and family of

25:39

the person who died. On

25:41

some of the criticisms, they said we monitor

25:43

seizures and nonfatal overdoses and

25:45

toxicology results as part of national

25:47

surveillance and early warning systems. And

25:50

they then issue advice and health alerts to local

25:52

authorities when there are dangerous

25:54

batches of specific drugs. And

25:56

they went on to add that an extra half a billion

25:59

pounds is being invested. over the next couple of

26:01

years to create more places in drug

26:03

and alcohol treatment.

26:13

I've just been to a funeral this morning. I have

26:16

a friend I've brought with that's where using

26:18

can take you. I feel blessed now,

26:21

I have a purpose, I come here on

26:23

dialybiosis. I'm

26:25

really grateful for that. My

26:28

mum can sleep at night, she's got a bit

26:31

of peace back. Have you

26:33

turned the corner? I've 100% turned the

26:35

corner. So I wake up now

26:37

and I get out of bed and

26:39

feel like I've got a new sense of life.

26:42

I'm realising what I missed

26:43

out on. And I can't change

26:45

none of the stuff I've done in the past, but I can change

26:47

what I do from today. Mark, thanks

26:49

so much for talking to me. No problem. I really appreciate it.

26:52

Alright, thank you. Have a lovely day.

26:58

So let's

27:00

just pop out into the garden. It's a therapeutic

27:02

area. They take responsibility for the plants

27:05

and sometimes we're growing tomatoes,

27:08

the service users are. And it's a nice

27:10

space for them to be. It's relaxing,

27:12

it's away from the hustle and bustle, the pressures

27:15

of their life. And to be

27:17

fair, they love coming out here. Well, I'm loving

27:19

the bird sound. Yes, yeah, out in

27:21

the open at last. Is the sun shining

27:23

because that's quite unusual at the

27:25

moment. I don't think it is, Simon.

27:28

I'm just curious, what drew

27:31

you to Addiction Services? Why did you

27:33

go, this is where I want to help out? I

27:36

don't know, I think my wife probably took a bit of credit for

27:38

that because she felt I was a really good listener. And

27:40

I like people and I like hearing

27:43

their stories and I feel like that's

27:45

where I can make a contribution. It all

27:47

started with a good pair of ears. A good pair

27:49

of ears for my wife, yeah, funny enough. Simon,

27:53

thanks so much for having me in today. It's been a pleasure,

27:55

I really enjoyed having you here.

28:05

Thank you for listening to the Inside Health

28:07

podcast from me, James Gallagher and

28:10

producer Jerry Holt. We're taking

28:12

a pause now for the end of summer, so

28:14

see you in a couple of weeks.

28:16

I saw a footprint. I'm

28:19

Andrew Benfield and I'm obsessed

28:21

with the Yeti. The first looks

28:23

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of a Yeti-like creature has been around for

28:28

centuries, but could it be real? In

28:31

Yeti, a new 10-part series from

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BBC Radio 4, I'm going

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to try to find out. I'll be joined by

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going for a short walk across the valley. I'm

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Richard Horsey. This search isn't

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going to be easy.

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They have the ability to disappear.

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Are we chasing Phantoms? Yeti

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Listen to Yeti on BBC

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