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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 16, 2016)
Street Roots • Sept. 16-22, 2016 FALUDI, from page 4 the book, and that was: “My daughter likes me now. She comes to see me. ” What is the significance of that? S.F.: Well, it pains me, in some ways, because I think my father was saying, “Well, Susan likes me now that I’m a woman.” And that’s upsetting because that isn’t why. I think it connects with the larger desire my father had to connect with other people in general. My father said to me over and over that she just felt so isolated as a man, and she said, “Men can’t talk to each other and they would just talk shop,” or in the U.S.,” they talk sports and 1 don’t like talking about sports.” My father was never very into this sort of American group sports anyway. My father, by changing her gender, felt she could come out of her shell, and talk to people. But I find that very sad, because in fact, she could have done that before, and I wish - and clearly she felt she couldn’t - I wish she could have just tried that because communicating with other people should hot be the province of one gender. And the truth is, I came to see my father because my father opened a door that I wanted to be opened a long time ago, and I think it was a door she wanted to have opened a long time ago; she just didn’t know how to do it. E.G.: Is there anything you want people who might be familiar with your previous works to know about this one? S.F.: I think all of my books have been about the distortion and damage done by foisting gender myths on women, on men, on the culture as a whole, and this book is very much a continuation of that theme. E.G.: It almost culminates here. S.F.: I think, while this is ultimately a personal story about a daughter’s struggle to understand her father, and her father’s struggle to understand her own identity, it’s also a book about the big battlefield that we’re on right now, which is identity. Whether it’s Brexit or Make America Great Trumpism or ISIS or you name it, hatred of immigrants, there is just all this crisis around the subject of identity and how one expresses identity and whether identity can be a force for emancipation; whether identity can be liberating - in the case of LGBT rights - where it’s about discovering yourself, it’s about self- awareness; or whether it’s oppressive and destructive, like all this xenophobic nationalism we’re seeing around the world now, in which identity is based on demonizing someone else and attacking them and refusing to engage in self- awareness and inspection of one’s own past. That’s a long-winded way of saying that while this is a story about one particular person, my father is this kind of identity zealot who was struggling with this big question of our age, on every front. Susan Faludi lives in Brunswick, Maine, where she teaches gender studies at Bowdoin College. . News Page 7 Canada OKs prescription heroin The move reflects changing attitudes toward addicts, placing compassion over criminalization BY EMILY GREEN STAFF WRITER he Canadian government legalized prescription heroin this past week. The move comes four months after Health Canada proposed the regulatory change, and ahead of the country’s planned legalization of recreational marijuana in 2017. Doctors in Canada can now prescribe laboratory-manufactured prescription-grade heroin, which can be imported from Europe, to patients who have failed to beat their addiction under more conventional treatment methods, including counseling REUTERS/ANDY CLARK (CANADA) and methadone. A small kit of supplies including syringes, bandages and antiseptic pads waits to be used by a drug addict inside a safe injection site in Vancouver, British Columbia. Known as Insite the According to Health Canada, “A facility operates legally as a place where addicts can inject their own heroin or cocaine under significant body of scientific evidence the supervision of a nurse. supports the medical use of diacetylmorphine, also known as pharmaceutical-grade heroin, for the more likely to reduce illegal drugs as well something that is a criminal act,” she said, treatment of chronic relapsing opioid as other illegal activities than those “this is looking at a harm reduction model, dependence.” which has become much more common in patients being treated with oral This change in drug law, enacted at the Europe going back for two decades. It ’ s the methadone, ” stated the report. bequest of the Minister of Health, allows an United States that’s way behind the curve.” Over the past several years, given the expansion of the drug’s availability under Fryklund said heroin maintenance limited legal availability of heroin and an Health Canada’s Special Access programs, which have operated in ongoing court battle over the program, Programme. Switzerland since 1994 with several other Providence also began to prescribe Doctors must send a request to the European countries, such as Germany, hydromorphone to some patients suffering Special Access following suite, from heroin addiction. Programme for acknowledge that not In April, the results of a study led by consideration before everyone is going to researchers at Providence Health Care and they are able to "The result of the study found be able to kick their the University of British Columbia among prescribe heroin to that patients given injectable heroin addiction. others, were published in the Journal of each new patient. “It may be American Medical Association Psychiatry. diacetylmorphine were more Access to legal Researchers found injected likely to stay in treatment, and maintaining people so heroin as part of a . they can not be hydromorphone, an opioid pain reliever, to heroin maintenance more likely to reduce illegal continually craving the be as effective as diacetylmorphine (heroin) program enables drugs as well as other illegal substance, not buying for people who have not benefited from addicts to stop activities than those patients adulterated heroin, other treatment methods, which they said engaging in illegal being treated with oral and can maybe get is about 10 percent of the opioid dependent activities, such as their lives together.” population not currently in treatment. methadone." theft and drug In Vancouver, Additionally, they found nearly 80 dealing, which may PROVIDENCE HEALTH CARE'S British Columbia, percent of the test subjects were retained have been supporting - CANADA'S REPORT ON ITS CLINICAL TRIAL OF PRESCRIBED HEROIN, 2005-2008 Providence Health in treatment at six months. their habit. It enables Care’s Crosstown “Hydromorphone and diacetylmorphine them to focus, Clinic began to are both safe when taken in a clinical instead, on improving prescribe injectable setting. Out of a total of 88,451 injections, their quality of life pharmaceutical grade heroin, also known as there were 14 overdoses and 11 seizures, and drug rehabilitation programs, research conducted in Europe, Israel and other parts diacetylmorphine, as a treatment option for all successfully managed in the clinic. If heroin addicts more than a decade ago, of the world shows. these events had occurred in the street, Heroin obtained from a laboratory is also with positive results. (Providence Health the outcomes may have been fatal,” state care is not affiliated with Providence Health the report’s key findings as listed by much safer than illicit heroin, which is and Services based in the Pacific often cut with lethal doses of drugs such as Providence. Northwest.) fentanyl. Fryklund said she hopes the U.S. will It was able to do so under a special Drug reform advocates in the United follow Canada’s example. court-ordered exemption to Canada’s illicit States, including Law Enforcement Against “Canada is engaging in some drug laws. Prohibition, or LEAP - a nationwide fundamental rethinking,” she said, while Providence Health Care’s website organization composed of current and “the U.S. is still making policy at the reports that North America’s first clinical former law enforcement officials, are federal level on the basis of a lot of trial of prescribed heroin took place at its applauding this new law. emotion and prejudice: Heroin users are clinic from 2005 to 2008. “We think it’s a step forward,” said Inge bad people and if they die, that’s their “The result of the study found that Fryklund, a former prosecutor, LEAP problem.” patients given injectable diacetylmorphine spokesperson and resident of Bend, Ore. were more likely to stay in treatment and emily@streetroots. org “Instead of treating heroin .addiction as ■
