Girlfriend in a Coma

The title of this blog post refers to a book of the same name by Douglas Coupland, not my girlfriend who is in fact my wife. I've been meaning to read some of his stuff for years. Finally got round to it after marching in to Waterstones waving my Christmas book token and snaffling a load of books including this one. Why mention it here? Well apart from the fact that it is absolutely excellent it does have an awful lot of drugs 'n' alcohol in it and clearly Coupland knows his stuff or has done his reseach because it's pretty accurate too. I won't go in to the details of the book because you can read the reviews on Amazon or elsewhere but it's a millenium book (published in 1998) which plays on the end of times fears we all experienced to a greater or lesser extent at the time. Remember the millenium bug? End of the world as computers, medical equipment, anything with a silicon chip in it really, was predicted to go in to terminal meltdown. What was that about then?

Anyway I can't recommend the book highly enough.

Elsewhere in drugland it's business as usual. The usual madness with the beauracracy of the NTA, DAAT's and so on. BUT - an interesting development with the release of the new 'Orange Book'. Or rather the new Dept of Health, NICE, NTA Drug Treatment Guidelines. (It seems to be book review week on this blog). http://www.nta.nhs.uk/areas/Clinical_guidance/clinical_guidelines/docs/clinical_guidelines_2007.pdf

This latest version of the guidleines - last updated in 1999 shows marked developments. These include a much more positive view on, amongst other things methadone maintenance. The book argues that there is now plenty of evidence showing the efficacy of maintenance and I couldn't agree more. For those of us who've knocked around the field for a while and are interested in treatment that actually works and has research evidence to show this, it's a real vindication. If you are working in the field, in one where you might come across drug users or just interested have a read.