COVID-19 and harm reduction in Greece – observations from inside the scenery

Background
To begin with,  we have to consider the condition of the general context which is the social-economic and the cultural one in Greece. A society extremely individualised after all where the vulnerable became more vulnerable and the middle class was smashed. It was not a coincidence that along with the austerity measures, literally at the same time ten years before two synthetic substances appeared in the open drug scene and changed the scenery. Poor quality of a type of methamphetamine called ‘sisa”(Arabic name for pipe) and a synthetic only for injection opiate called in the streets”thai”. These drugs came to stay along with the feeling of the constant emergency that penetrated all ranks of the Greek society except the super-rich of course. After ten years of austerity measures there was a wave of some kind of hope, the pandemic came and erased that wave. When the lockdown happened the street drug users without the ”mantle of the crowd” became much more visible and as a result of that much more vulnerable. There were almost the only ones in the street with the police

The response
The two major institutions: one of substance-free treatment and the other who holds the monopoly of  OST, that dominate with their ideological sometimes perspective, the ‘addiction’ field, stopped at the same time their street work/outreach. The drop-in centres continued their function but with strict measures and also all the substance-free units, gateway to closed communities also stopped to work. The responsibility for the PWUD/PWID in the streets once again shifted from these state-supported and with a budget of millions of institutions to small NGO’s including us.  The last time that happened was back at the HIV outbreak on the IDU’s back at 2011-2013 (I am one of the recorder incidents). It worked actually. Within a very short time, civil society organisations responded to the specific needs of my community. People who were using in the streets at the beginning were bullied from the police but finally, they were left alone. Their needs were not only paraphernalia but also basic necessities of life like food and water. And somebody to talk with…

Our street workers and other service providers transferred to me a clear image of what was going on outside. But after more than three weeks back in my office and after long walks in the centre of Athens I can combine the information they gave me with my own observations.

Indeed there was no change in pricing and the quality of street drugs. At the beginning of the lockdown police tried to dissolve the crowds around the ‘traditional spots’ of drug use in the centre, but not that later it stopped harassing people. Some traditional and long-lasting drug scenes very close to the historical centre vanished not because of the police but because of the dealers who became very visible and that’s why they moved for their own security measures to other spots, near the old commercial centre. Indeed there was a visible increase in the places where the sisa smokers gather and a slight decrease of quality. The same group of people uses heroin (not the injectable type) and benzodiazepines. They were moved slowly from the police without incidents of violence(at least not many)  to the outskirts of the centre. It is probably the first time that this group of people moves from the centre to more remote areas like the central train station. A lot of more let’s say ‘devoted’ heroin users started moving to the west suburbs of Athens where the Roma ghettos are, to find cheap poor quality heroin. Groups of people from Asia carry the staff to the centre and then resell it in double price. But a lot of the Greek origin heroin users moved more or less permanently from the centre to the source of cheap drugs. To the west suburb of Menidi. They can also find cocaine and grass. So we have let say also a  kind of decentralisation of the drug scenes. That was happening of course long before the lockdown but it was really intensified and still is now. That also creates new challenges because it is not an area that the service providers like the street workers who distribute paraphernalia can go there. It is out of the question for numerous serious reasons. Also, the local authorities are not friendly with this kind of activity and the Roma population is extremely hostile. Lot of PWUD that I personally know and I met at my office or talked to on the phone mentioned that due to that, there were numerous cases where PWID shared their works.

What I also observed throughout the cases I dealt with these weeks was the mental and physical deregulation of PWUDs at an increased level not seen before the lockdown. People were very scared, very disorganised, they did not adhere to their antiretroviral medication for HIV like before and most of them were asking for an HIV test because they shared their work. Also, they were not very well informed about COVID 19. Despite the very positive fact of the opening -in at last- during the lockdown of the Shelter for homeless drug users, the more vulnerable of the community is in danger for many many reasons.

I am afraid that we will face all the consequences of all that things in a very short time and as field workers but above all as activists of the most dehumanised and marginalised community of people in Greece, the drug users, we have to be armed with patience and strength to deal with all that and with a new economic recession. What is going on to the societal context directly affects the most vulnerable parts of the population.

When I asked a friend of mine that I know for more than 15 years how things were in the streets during the lockdown he replied “More or less the same. We are junkies and nobody gave a fuck about us. Even the cops did not approach us. …Some days we could not find water or something to eat but thank God we could always find something to score…” He was not the only one who described in a vivid manner the condition like that. That gave me the idea that there was a  small gap between the reality the service providers described to me and the community reality, the actual people who are on the streets. There is always this small gap.  Communities are always let say one step ahead. From service providers, from policymakers, from all sorts of allies and friends. We have always to look to our own analytical tools to decodify the various needs and the pulse of the community.

Marios Atzemis
Harm Reduction Officer, Athens
www.positivevoice.gr