Edith Springer is a consultant with the New York Harm Reduction Educators. She is a pioneer of Harm Reduction in the United States and helped to found the Harm Reduction Coalition over a decade ago after traveling to Europe and studying innovative drug reform efforts

I started using drugs when I was very young and found out, let me just say this, I will be 58 next month and in my day there really was no drug education or information in the schools or anything like that, I didn’t know anything about drugs, I didn’t know anyone who used drugs and then all of a sudden when I got to be a teenager, I hung out with the out group at my school. In the out group were a lot of people of color, a lot of black people, people who were interested in jazz, Greenwich Village, Lenny Bruce, kind of underground and alternative people. And I found out they were smoking pot.

I was horrified. I was absolutely horrified. I thought it was narcotics and they were addictive and all this stuff. I soon found out this wasn’t true and I found out a lot of the things I believed about drugs were not true and unfortunately I threw out everything they say about drugs- even what they said that was true- I couldn’t tell what was true from what was not. Then came a time of drug experimentation of all young people in our country and I was chief among them. I did a lot of drug experimentation, psychedelic drugs, then tried hard drugs, again, I didn’t believe the things they said about hard drugs were true.

I got arrested in 1967, it was just a fluke thing, we were picked up by a guy who was a truck driver, but he was in his private car, and he had been taking pills, amphetamines, too stay awake because he was trying to get a far distance in a short amount of time. This guy, he was paranoid. I fell asleep. He was paranoid and misunderstood what my friends were saying. What one said to the other was, this guy was AWOL from the Navy and said, “Should we turn him on?” meaning to marijuana, but the guy thought he meant should we kill him. So he stops at a gas station and gives a note to the gas station manager saying, “the hitchhikers in my car are trying to kill me, please help me.” Now, before we got in the car, these guys had a couple joints of marijuana and they said, “Edith, hold the marijuana because they don’t search women.” And the next thing I know there’s lights flashing and there’s a man saying, put your roof on the hands of the car, get out of the car, get in the position, they searched me, they did not mirandize me, and they found the marijuana and I was arrested. It was Flagstaff, Arizona and it was a felony- the amount of marijuana. At the time I was not even using drugs. I had gone to California to become a Maharishi. The Beatles had this guru named Maharishi and I went to study with him. He told me though, “You can’t use drugs and meditate.” I stopped smoking pot and everything else. I was hitchhiking to go home.

I told the cop that I was just holding it for them and he said, “well, possession is nine-tenths of the law.” I got convicted. It was a horrible experience for me being in jail also. Because the judge when I was arraigned, the judge who had a cowboy hat on and cowboy boots, said, “bring me the kike from New York.” And in my whole life I had never been called a name for being a Jew, because I lived in New York my whole life and when he said that I knew I was in big trouble. There were signs all over Route 66 saying “Hippie, Go Home.” And we were hippies.

“You know when you are young you think the Police are there to help you, the environment’s a positive place, you feel secure. I never felt secure again.”

I called my parents and they bailed me out. I was in this cell without windows and I couldn’t tell when it was day and when it was night. I said, tell me when it’s a certain time so I can call my parents and they told me in the middle of the night, so I called my parents in the middle of the night- they were just playing with me. My parents got me this Jewish lawyer- the Perry Mason of Arizona. He had done the first civil rights cases and so they hated him. The judge hated him, the prosecutor hated him. I came home on bail and I was so frightened, I started using drugs more than I ever had before. I picked up a heroin addiction. The night before my trial I tried to kill myself, I took an overdose. My mother put me on a plane and said, “You’re going to trial.”

The jury only took 10 minutes. I got a year. I had never been arrested before. I was a student. I was supposed to go to the Arizona State Pen for women, but they had rioted and my lawyer begged the judge not to send me, he said, “they’ll eat her up, they’ll kill her. So they sent me to the county jail. I was the only person there most of the time. Occasionally there’d be a runaway. My mother was writing me letters, I never got any, they would send me books, I never got any. The guards would tell me, “they don’t care about you.” There was another woman in solitary, she was having sex with the female guards and they protected her, brought her cigarettes, candy. They would bring me cigarettes and no matches. My parents would send me money and I never got any of it. They told me every day I scrubbed the floor I’d get a day off my sentence. Aha ha ha… But I think scrubbing that floor kept me sane.

The day they released me my lawyer put me on a plane to New York. My father didn’t speak to me for a year. I was so messed up. I was afraid to go out in the street, I was afraid I was going to get arrested, I was in horrible shape. I got a job and moved out of my parents’ house.

You know when you are young you think the Police are there to help you, the environment’s a positive place, you feel secure. I never felt secure again. I never believe the American ideals. I mean I believed in them, but I didn’t think anybody else did. I got very involved in politics and civil rights groups and really began to see that the world was haves and have-nots and people controlled people and people got screwed. I was one of the people that got screwed.

And then, surprisingly, although I was a heroin addict for many years, I never again, I got picked up by the cops a couple of times, but I never got arrested again. Part of it was racism, because I hung out with people of color, that was the drug world, and often if they busted a shooting gallery and I was there, they’d let me go and arrest all of the people of color. I began to understand what a privilege, although it wasn’t deserved what having white skin was. In those days there was no outreach programs, there was very little drug treatment. There was the 12-step thing, which I really didn’t know about at that time. I think there was NA, but I had no idea. All I knew about was, I lived across the street from Odyssey House, one of those therapeutic communities- one of those harsh programs. And people would come out of there with their heads shaved and come across the street to my apartment and shoot dope.

When I finally decided to get treatment I decided not that, obviously, it didn’t work. So I would go through detox repeatedly. In those days it was 21 days in Beth Israel Hospital. They would keep you for 21 days. I think I did 18 of those and would always go back. Finally I heard about this thing called methadone maintenance. At first I bought it from a psychiatrist in Harlem. It was supposed to be therapy but there was no therapy, he met with me once. I was supposed to withdraw myself… I did that repeatedly until he couldn’t do it anymore.

During my addiction I worked, I was a secretary. I never hustled or stole- I just wasn’t trained for that – I was raised to be a good girl, so I suffered a lot.

Finally my family doctor who was always supported, never judged me, I asked him for help. He said I don’t know how to help you, I’ve never been successful treating a heroin addict and he called me up and said, they are opening these programs called methadone maintenance programs, and I said I know what they are, and he said, no, this would be every day. Beth Israel was the place. He sent me down there and two years later, I was still on a waiting list. This was in the late 1960’s.

Q: What happened during those two years? Did your drug use stabilize or increase?

It didn’t increase because I couldn’t afford for it to increase, and I just wasn’t the kind of person who could hurt anyone or commit crimes. The kind of crimes I did was steal food to eat, you know? I couldn’t bother anybody. I had friends who did those things. I had a very small habit. I had a very cheap apartment. Of course I paid my rent late all the time, I had no telephone, I could never buy anything. I was just struggling. I would always tell my grandmother another story to get money.

I got Hepatitis from going to shooting galleries and sharing equipment. And my family doctor said, “Edith, you can’t share equipment.” And I said where am I going to get needles? So he wrote me a prescription for syringes, refillable as much as I needed. I never shared needles again, which is probably why I never got HIV. He was a wonderful doctor. During those two years I would go to him crying, saying I just can’t take it anymore. He would say hold on dear, hold on. When he could he would give me some opiates, but he didn’t want to break the law, but he would try to give me opiates to tie me over.

Then in 1969 I met this woman who told me that her husband, he ex-husband, was opening up a methadone program at Bellevue. She gave me the information where to call. Well, you had to be psychiatrically diagnosed. So I went back to my family doctor and he told me what to say, he taught me how to be crazy. I went for the interview and I was depressed, but I convinced them, I was off and on suicidal, but they took me.

I got myself together. Once I was on methadone, I went back to college at night. I worked full time. I went to college at night and about a year or two later I went to therapy. My social worker said I can’t help you, you need psychotherapy. The first place she sent me to, we were treated badly. They said, we don’t take heroin addicts, they never get better.

“They seemed to have an agenda of keeping you down.”

I got in this woman’s study and it was like being on parole. They wanted to control me. I had to prove where I was at all times. They seemed to have an agenda of keeping you down. When I married my husband they got mad at me for not clearing it with them first. For not discussing it with them. I said who the hell are you? It was just a battle.

There came a time, I had gotten my college degree, I just didn’t want to be controlled by a methadone program. I knew I could never feel like a normal person, motivate myself, and heal as long as I was in their clutches. I went to them and said I want to get off methadone and they said, “21 day detox.” And I said, no, that’s what you do to punish people. So I did it and I failed and I was on the street again buying heroin. So I called the ACLU.

The director, he didn’t want a suit, so we compromised on a nine month detox program. I’ll tell you, it was tough going from five to zero milligrams a day. Now they go one by one at that level.

After I got off, I went to them for help, for counseling, and they said, “if you don’t take methadone, you’re not in a methadone program.” That next year was the toughest year of my entire life. I didn’t sleep, I felt awful. That was ’73 now. The one thing I didn’t want to do was take any opiates. My friends thought I was dying, they wanted me to go back on methadone, but I didn’t want to be controlled by a methadone program.

Some people may be heroin addicts because there’s a problem with their endorphin system, maybe the vesicles don’t store it properly, maybe a problem with receptor sites. I’ll tell you something, the first time I took heroin, I said this is the first time I’ve felt good in my entire life- there was something different about that drug. I never drank alcohol, but I’ve always felt the best on a opiate. I don’t know what that means. Maybe there’s something wrong with my system, not enough endorphins, I don’t know.

I went on to graduate school to become a social worker. My idea was to go back in the drug treatment field, because I had had such a bad experience in drug treatment. I couldn’t believe that they took this wonderful intervention, I think methadone is a wonderful intervention, and they destroyed it because they let the DEA make the rules. Supposedly, when it was first invented, it was supposed to be like diabetic’s insulin, but diabetics don’t have to go to programs everyday, they don’t get watched while they pee in a cup, they don’t get rewarded and punished, they don’t get vandalized, and treated like children. My husband has been on methadone for decades, he is the model patient. He lost a bottle of methadone, he had it in a shoulder bag, he did some errands and discovered the bag was missing. He went back to the program to replace the bottle and they took away his privileges for two weeks. On the program since 1969 and this just happened six months ago.

Q: So he’d been on the program over 30 years?

Yes! They punished him. They treated him like a child and he was crying, he said they rob you of your dignity. He just wants a vacation, but they won’t do that unless you’re going somewhere. He just wanted to sit at the beach and they wouldn’t let him do it. Methadone is a ruined intervention. I think methadone should be put in the hands of primary care physicians just like every other prescription. If you can’t be trusted- maybe there should be programs for those few people- who are mentally ill, or who are so ill they can’t be treated, but for normal people- the idea is to rehabilitate people, to normalize people. You can’t normalize if you have to go to a program every day. People on the program have a hell of a time going to work, taking care of their families and going to the program.

I can tell you story after story of clients who have been denied work. Nobody should know about it. It should be between you and your doctor. Ernie Drucker, an epidemiologist with Montefiore got a grant to study primary care physicians giving methadone. It’s a study to see if it works. And it’s working beautifully according to Ernie. They’re out in Arizona.

The entire drug treatment system needs an overhaul. It’s a war on drugs treatment system- a punitive, horrible experience. When I was trying to get help I realized they insist on treating you like a criminal, a predator, and a horrible person. Most drug users are not horrible people, they are forced to become criminals sometimes, but most of the people here would never hurt anyone, they are just trying to survive. What makes it difficult is not the pharmacology of the drugs, but the illegality of the drugs. When you think about how expensive they are, it’s all because of prohibition. We have decided to criminalize this behavior- but there’s nothing intrinsically criminal about getting high, but we just decided to criminalize it. Now people who do it are criminal. The other thing is that people use drugs as a coping mechanism.

I experimented with drugs, but why did I keep using them? I was very unhappy, I came from a messed up family and drugs help you cope. But once you get a habit, the drugs become a problem of their own. If it weren’t for prohibition, it wouldn’t have to be the problem. I was just reading an article- 2/3rds of drug addicts who come to treatment have mental illness, around the country. It’s not always serious- maybe depression, anxiety, adjustment disorder... Another big statistic is how many trauma survivors- among the women and men there is all kinds of abuse, trauma, and deprivation.

A lot of our clients have Hepatitis C, HIV.

When we started needle exchange, it was between 50 and 60% in our area here among injection drug users. Now it’s supposed to be around 12-15%. And that’s because of needle exchange. The CDC says most of the people spreading the virus don’t know they have it. We have saturated the people who know about us, but now we are trying to reach those that don’t. We got a new van to go out under the bridges and to the “Hoovervilles.”

The CDC told me they wouldn’t accept the needle exchange data because there was no control group- I said what about New Jersey!? But now they accept it. When I was a consultant with them, I refused to have my name on something if it did not include needle exchange as a prevention method. I wrote them a letter saying they were not a health organization but a political organization when they refused to do it. I think I scared the hell out of them, so after about nine months, they relented.

We have five street sites, and three offices and now we are going to open a fourth. We have nine different programs- we don’t just do needles, we do health, HIV treatment, we do access to drug treatment, 27 support groups. Through all of our programs we saw over 19,500 separate individuals last year. Some people come every day, others once a week. We are the largest Harm Reduction program on the East Coast, probably in the United States in terms of numbers.

We were originally called the Bronx-Harlem needle exchange.

This is one of the most true to HR programs that I know. That is why I came and asked to work here. Over 85% of our staff are former clients that we trained through our volunteer program.

“The CDC told me they wouldn’t accept the needle exchange data because there was no control group- I said what about New Jersey!?”

Q: Is it a good idea to have people still in recovery as counselors?

We don’t really participate in the recovery model. We have an access to treatment program. Some of our staff are in recovery and they don’t have any problem working with active user to someone in recovery. If someone is newly in recovery it might be dangerous for them to work in a certain environment, so when you hire people, you don’t want to jeopardize their recovery. Some of our staff are on methadone and they have a different recovery model. Some of our staff are current users, but they are well-managed and you wouldn’t know. Some people we want them to get off drugs, some on methadone. If people are in recovery and they have a problem with active users, we ask them to leave the staff.

Q: Is NYC doing a good job addressing the drug problem?

Not at all. First of all, the Rockefeller drug laws are the most draconian drug laws. Most of those in the prison are there for drugs. It is the most expensive way to deal with the drug problem- treatment is cheaper. But the treatment system is a failed system. So when you send someone to treatment instead of jail you are sending them to a failed system. It’s like anything else- if you are rich you can get into good programs. There are some places you can go and they put you on anesthesia while you are going through withdrawal- but it’s $8,000/month. Betty Ford didn’t get waken up every morning to clean the floor with a toothbrush like she would at some of these places.

The field refuses to change, so they keep doing the same old, same old. A lot of people are going through withdrawal and it’s a punishment thing- “you have sinned, so now you have to suffer.” Now you have to have more credentials to become a counselor but it is based in the same old material.

The detoxes are the same old cold turkey programs, but of course they are shorter now because of managed care. Now you are lucky if you can get seven days. Plus, insurance discriminates against those with mental health issues. If I want to go to detox I have to pay $500. They discriminate against mental health and substance abuse, but I think those things are just as important as a broken leg. There has been a little bit of a paradigm shift in policy and treatment, but it’s still being resisted. The old guard is holding on, fighting…

Q: Is the old guard made up of former addicts?

It is people who came in through recovery and also of professionals who believe in the old models. Part of our belief is that a lot of the reasons addicts get treated badly is counter-transference of the counselors. The feelings and beliefs of the therapist get projected on the work that don’t belong there.

A lot of therapists right away when drug users come in, they say, “I can’t work with you unless you stop using.” And they send people away. How are you supposed to get to a point where you can stop using if we won’t help you? I think they see their own failure- they don’t understand the drug issue.

Q: What exactly is Harm Reduction?

When you can’t stop something that is harmful or risky, or you don’t want to, you do what you can to reduce the harm. For example- look at cars- they are very dangerous, they kill people, hurt people, pollute the environment. Any rational person would get rid of them. Instead we have airbags, traffic lights, seatbelts, you have to be a certain age. So they took a dangerous thing and put rules around it. But we didn’t make it illegal. If you can’t stop it- reduce the harm.

“When you take an all or nothing position, you frequently get a lot of nothing. The War on Drugs is a good example. It hasn’t cut stopped or cut down on the amount of drug use in the country, it hasn’t cut down on the amount of harm, in fact, it’s increased the harm. Because just like with alcohol prohibition we have organized crime. And think about how much money is going after drugs that should be protecting us from terrorists.

In Germany, they have decriminalized any amount for personal use- it makes sense to me. When they gave people their drug of choice in the British health service- he said that when people want to use drugs and the government doesn’t provide them in a legal way, the government abdicates responsibility to criminals- because people are going to get it. If they say don’t do it, do you really think people aren’t going to do it- history teaches us otherwise. It’s always linked to the economy.

Why does our country refuse to look at some of the new European models? The Dutch, Swiss, English models… It’s because certain people are making money from prohibition. If you know anything about jail you know there’s drugs in jail. How do you think they get there? The guards. The guards make money selling to the inmates. You can get anything you want in jail if you have money. I have clients who tell me that drugs are better in jail than outside of jail!

Q: What drug policy would you reform first?

It’s hard to know what would be the first thing, but let me say one important thing from my perspective from where I sit- I think it is important to stop incarcerating people for using drugs. They need- free if necessary- state of the art, treatments to help them stop using. I think it would be cheaper than incarceration. Jail should be for people who are dangerous, violent, harmful…

Another important thing would be to, depending on what other countries have done. I have some seen that other countries seem to have reduced use. In Holland, where they have made marijuana accessible, they say fewer teenagers use it than before.

There are certain connections people make that are not true- that drugs cause domestic violence, that’s not true. We need to re-educate people.

My way of thinking is always from the individual level. Nobody should go to jail because they get high. It’s criminalizing people who are not criminals.

The government’s drug research arm is bogus. NIDA, SAMHSA, the government gives them the conclusion to come to, and then they come to it. The government should fund it, but the findings should not be based on politics.