Safe Zone

Abstract

Chapter 9 teaches readers that harm reduction is a general term for a variety of strategies to keep people who are abusing psychoactive substances safe, to engage them in a nonjudgmental way, and to take pragmatic approaches to reduce harm associated with high-risk behaviors that people who abuse psychoactive substances experience. Harm reduction addresses the urgent need to avoid overdoses, injection-related diseases and infections, the use of contaminated psychoactive substances, and create a gateway for transitioning to psychotherapeutic treatment. The objective of harm reduction interventions is to provide safer healthcare initiatives and to create an environment where people abusing psychoactive substances have a high probability of accepting psychotherapeutic interventions to achieve not only abstinence, but also ultimately a state of recovered.