Substance Abuse and Harm Reduction Services

Iris House’s Harm Reduction program incorporates a spectrum of strategies from safer use, to managed use to abstinence to meet drug users “where they’re at,” addressing conditions of use along with the use itself. We provide critical support to clients whose patterns of substance use and abuse are affecting their overall health, including their ability to remain adherent to their HIV treatment regimen.

We consider the following principles (neatly summarized by the Harm Reduction Coalition) central to harm reduction practice.

• Accepts, for better and or worse, that licit and illicit drug use is part of our world and chooses to work to minimize its harmful effects rather than simply ignore or condemn them.
• Understands drug use as a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon that encompasses a continuum of behaviors from severe abuse to total abstinence, and acknowledges that some ways of using drugs are clearly safer than others.
• Establishes quality of individual and community life and well-being–not necessarily cessation of all drug use–as the criteria for successful interventions and policies.
• Calls for the non-judgmental, non-coercive provision of services and resources to people who use drugs and the communities in which they live in order to assist them in reducing attendant harm.
• Ensures that drug users and those with a history of drug use routinely have a real voice in the creation of programs and policies designed to serve them.
• Affirms drugs users themselves as the primary agents of reducing the harms of their drug use, and seeks to empower users to share information and support each other in strategies which meet their actual conditions of use.
• Recognizes that the realities of poverty, class, racism, social isolation, past trauma, sex-based discrimination and other social inequalities affect both people’s vulnerability to and capacity for effectively dealing with drug-related harm.
• Does not attempt to minimize or ignore the real and tragic harm and danger associated with licit and illicit drug use.

Our Harm Reduction Counselors are available to assist clients with building strength to make better choices and achieve healthier living.

The goal of Iris House’s Harm Reduction & Recovery program is to help clients identify their high risk sexual and substance using behaviors that could result in the transmission of HIV to others or lead to negative health outcomes for themselves.

Services Provided:

• On-site Individual Counseling focusing on harm reduction and treatment adherence
• A 12 week cycle of Preventive Educational Groups (English/Spanish)
• Referrals to Medical Care, Substance Abuse Treatment, and Social Services based on clients needs.