With a background in art-based workshop provision, facilitating groups and teaching, Dave McNamara also has over sixteen years experience of working holistically with drug users and drug use in a wide range of settings. A drug and alcohol worker in Brighton & Hove since 2000, he has been delivering high quality drug and alcohol awareness and harm minimisation training for the last 6 years to a wide variety of organisations and service providers.

Drug & alcohol awareness inputs include:

  • What is a drug / who is a drug user?
  • Exploring own dependencies & relationship to the 'pleasure principle'
  • Drugs in their widest social, cultural & historical context
  • The hidden history of drugs
  • Alcohol: myths & facts
  • Alcohol: societal attitudes, patterns of consumption and units
  • Alcohol: strategies for controlled drinking - needs awareness, needs replacement
  • Alcohol: permission giver for forbidden behaviours, feelings and parts of the self.
  • Drugs: categories, types and effects
  • Reefer Madness & Moral Panics: the 'psychology of negative drug effects reporting'
  • Reasons for drug taking / theories of drug use
  • Drug, set & setting
  • Understanding altered states of consciousness
  • The Placebo and Nocebo Effect: perceptions and realities.
  • The legal framework: classes, schedules and 'potential to harm'
  • Harm minimisation: philosophy, history & strategies
  • Lapse, relapse & collapse prevention: strategies & interventions