Dear Friends and Community Members,
As you may know, I have been fundraising for my airfare to the International Harm Reduction Association Conference (IHRA) which will be happening this April in Beirut, Lebanon. I am proud and extremely pleased to announce that with the help of TRIP! Coordinator and North American Youth RISE rep Lisa Campbell Salazar I’ve been able to raise $900 so far! Continue reading
Welcome to the new TRIP! Project Community Zine on tobacco and harm reduction! Be sure to click on the image above to get your copy of the PDF fresh off the press. This issue we will be exploring tobacco, one of the most prevelent drugs out there. The articles within this zine are a collaborative effort featuring a collection of youth voices from our community with the focus on tobacco and harm reduction. The goal of this zine is to offer information that will empower youth to make healthier lifestyle choices around tobacco and other smokable herbs. The articles featured in the zine focus on a variety of topics including tips for quitting smoking, cutting down, emerging trends, personal reflections and poetry of individuals affected directly or indirectly by smoking. The opinions expressed in this zine are those of their respective authors and may include some bias as they reflect our diverse community. Think critically while reading! Learn more about smoking and harm reduction by checking out Holy Smokes pt 1, with a focus on pot. Continue reading
The TRIP! Project is looking for experienced dancers, musicians, visual arts/fashion specialists or other talented ravers looking to spread their arts-related skills in a series of workshops to take place from March – June on Saturday afternoons. Continue reading
When we strive towards the common goal of harm reduction, it is best done through community participation. The more allies we have, the stronger we are. The more familiar we become with the struggle of others, the more we learn about our own and acquire new skills and tools to further our cause. On Saturday January 22nd I sat in on a Community Justice Coalition meeting. The topic was, but not limited to, the prison industrial complex. That may sound like a mouthful, so let me take a moment to explain. The prison industrial complex is a term that is often used to describe the manner in which the rapid expansion of people in prison is linked to the influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. The people who promote this are more interested in making a profit rather than rehabilitating individual or actually reducing the crime rate. As such, many people end up institutionalized for the wrong reasons. These can be substance use and disability which results in the criminalization of both drug users and people with disabilities. In some of the saddest instances, they end up dying in the institutions from lack of proper medical care or harm reductions supplies. Continue reading
I want to start at the very beginning of my story: I have always had an addictive personality and addiction runs in my family. In Grade 9 it was drinking, Grade 10 came weed, cigarettes, ecstasy, mushrooms, cocaine, ketamine. Grade 11 came nitrous, acid and then there was M3 (mixture of meth, coke, and k). I wanted everything but I never knew when to cut myself off. I would steal and lie just to get what I needed to get high. We had a support group of about 14 of us, we would constantly want to get high, find new links for each other and make each other all feel relatively normal. Most of us were functioning in our daily life, saving the drug use until the weekend, while others were already starting to slip mentally and going on binges. It’s a scary moment for anyone when you realize one of your best friends doesn’t think they’re living on the same planet anymore. I was that friend. A few of the people in my group would sometimes have little mental break downs or show signs of not being stable, but I was constantly not okay. I now know what happened to me was a mixture of all the drugs I had been doing leading up to the disastrous point that put all my brain chemical levels out of whack. It may be hard to believe but it’s not so hard to get lost into believing that what you see and hear is real no matter how extreme it may be. Continue reading
Violence against drug users isn’t something we enjoy thinking about, but it is a reality that plays itself out on a daily basis and it is very much worthy of our concern and attention. It may not necessarily manifest itself through physical violence though it can and has in the past. Policies are sometimes created and adopted to discriminate against minority groups, in turn jeopardizing their social mobility. Examples of this can be illustrated through the creation of the Anti-Opium Ordinance passed in in 1878 which was directed at criminalizing Chinese immigrants who had used opium traditionally and as well when looking at the current laws surrounding crack cocaine as opposed to cocaine which seek to criminalize the lower classes that are traditionally associated with the use of crack cocaine. As I sat in a criminal court room in Queens New York, last December, case after case that was presented before me dealt with nearly the same thing; an individual tracked down through racial profiling, what appeared to be an unwarranted search, charged with possession of crack cocaine, case presented as an intent to traffic. Why was this happening? Why were all of these people who demonstrated clear signs of not only poverty but mental disorders as well, being criminalized? Why were their attorneys, supposedly in charge of their legal well being, seeming so aloof? It was because of this same violence that I want to turn to. Violence against drug users, as I see it, is their denial of liberty, of a proper justice system and the permanent stain that is often left on their lives whether it be their denial into neighbouring countries or of a number of employment opportunities. Continue reading
January 17, 2011, Toronto, Ontario — Calling all youth peer educators! This release announces the launch of Empower: An HIV Capacity Building Project for Youth by Youth, a one-year project made possible by a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Bringing together diverse Toronto youth, Empower will train peer educators to use a community-arts based approach to HIV prevention and other sexual health issues. The project, which will run until December 1, 2011, is a collaboration between Central Toronto Community Health Centres, the Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE), and Gendering Adolescent AIDS Prevention (GAAP). Continue reading
Happy New Year TRIP!sters!!!!
For some, the coming of a new year signifies partying hard, staying up all night chatting with friends new and old and watching the sun rise as you remember the good and bad times that the previous year irrevocably handed you. For others, the new year signifies a time for reflection, particularly when you realize that certain parts of your life are going to change wether it be simply growing up, becoming a new parent, getting a new job (or accomplishing more at one you’re at ) starting school ( or trying to stay in school ) or dealing with disease. Continue reading
Please pass word along to any k users you know, especially if anyone’s picked up anything unsual during the new years rush and are still sitting on it.
We’ve just received some reports of something being sold as k that apparently contains a substance with very dangerous side-effects. A user who purchased off an unknown source was hospitalized with very serious symptoms, including bleeding out the sides of their eyes. They were taken to a hospital in the GTA and the doctor they spoke with told them that they had seen multiple cases of this specifically related to ketamine use. Continue reading
Thank you so much for your support for the TRIP! Project over the years! Initiated in 1995 by the community, for the community, the TRIP! Project has been providing safer nightlife harm reduction services for 15 years now. We’ve been through thick and thin to support the dance music community throughout the years, from the rave crackdown in the early 2000s to the closing of the Big Bop. TRIP! continues to provide harm reduction services to Toronto’s diverse dance music communities and over the years has trained over 400 volunteers! These peer educators have shared life saving skills with our community including overdose prevention, counseling, and CPR. Our volunteers are also trained in anti-oppression, ensuring our community continues to be a caring and supportive environment. Continue reading