The development of the recreational drug outreach educational concept ‘Drug Idle’

Abstract

Background: Recreational drug use in common, particularly in those attending nightclubs. Their knowledge about the potential toxicity of drugs and how to manage this is variable.

Methods: We therefore established a multidisciplinary local network of key stakeholders interested in the prevention and management of recreational drug toxicity. Through this network we designed a unique outreach educational concept, ‘Drug Idle’, for recreational drug users and their friends. This was run within nightclub environments in a user-friendly, non-judgemental forum. We describe here the development of this educational concept and how it was evaluated and adapted on the basis of feedback from attendees.

Results: 149 attended the three Drug Idle events as part of this study. All of those trialling the finalized concept thought all three components of the concept were useful, 96.0% that it was of appropriate duration and 98.8% that they would recommend future events to a friend.

Conclusions: We believe that wider use of this outreach educational concept will help to improve the knowledge of those using recreational drugs, especially concerning management of drug toxicity. Additionally, it will provide them with information that will enable them to make informed decisions about the risk of continuing use of recreational drugs.

Keywords:

• Recreational drugs
• users
• outreach education
• networks
• toxicity
• prevention

Acknowledgements

This study was part-funded by a grant to the clinical toxicology team (DW/PD) from the UK Department of Health. We would like to thank the sponsors of the events who provided financial assistance with the advertising and promotion of the events (QX Magazine) and prizes for the interactive quizzes (Gaydar and Prowler).

Declaration of interest

DW and PD have acted as scientific advisers to the UK Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drugs Addiction (EMCDDA). The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.