Pubdate: Thu, 20 Aug 2009
Source: Nelson Star (CN BC)
Copyright: 2009 Black Press
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/4kNvY8sy
Website: http://www.nelsonstar.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4866
Page: 21
Author: Sam Van Schie, Nelson Star
Note: Only published on Thursdays

SHAMBHALA MORE THAN A PARTY

For Warren Michelow, the Shambhala Music Festival in Salmo last week 
was more than just a giant party, it was a research environment.

Michelow is a PhD student in public health (epidemiology) at 
University of B.C. His thesis work is on the patterns and health 
outcomes of multiple drugs in a rave, music festival setting.

"The problem with a lot of drug research is not knowing the size of 
the population you're drawing a sample from; so, there is no 
denominator for statistics," Michelow explained. "At Shambhala we 
know how many people are here, so we can get a sense of how this 
population behaves."

Michelow hired a team of professional researchers to administer 
surveys to more than 300 people at the festival. They found people 
when they were relaxing on the site and asked for their voluntary 
participation in the study.

The surveys were completely anonymous and participants weren't paid 
or otherwise reimbursed.

They answered questions about how they spent the last 24-hour period: 
When they slept, when they danced, and most importantly for the 
research, when they used drugs and how they combined the drugs they did use.

Drug use was not a prerequisite of involvement in the survey and 
researchers found many respondents hadn't used drugs at all during 
the 24-hour period prior to doing the survey, or they had only used 
alcohol or marijuana.

While Michelow hasn't analyzed the data yet, skimming through the 
surveys showed significant trends.

Surveys were collected each day of the festival and Michelow easily 
noticed a significant trend of increasingly harder drug use as the 
festival continued. While a majority reported being sober or just 
drinking alcohol in the 24-hour period before the first day of the 
festival, the combination of pot and alcohol took over popularity as 
the festival began to get underway and in the later days a majority 
of respondents reported using illicit drugs other than marijuana.

"It shows that people are pacing themselves," Michelow said. "What 
may look like reckless behaviour is actually planned and thought-out 
in this setting."

Michelow said people at Shambhala prefer shorter acting drugs, such 
as cocaine or ketamine, over longer acting drugs such as LSD.

"They want to stay in control of their experience, adding a little 
more as they need it," Michelow said.

This information is useful in the context of harm prevention and 
adapting strategies to encourage responsible drug use.

Michelow said while a lot of drug use research focuses on a specific 
substance or outcome (for example, how injection drug use contributes 
to the spread of HIV) recreational drug users are an understudied population.

But it's a population Michelow has spent a lot of time working with. 
He has run The Sanctuary, a safe space at Shambhala, for five years. 
Over the course of the festival well over 1,000 people come through 
the sanctuary, and about 200 of those are looking for assistance from 
the volunteers because they've used too many drugs.

"We try to help those people have a positive, constructive experience 
on the drugs they've used," Michelow said. "They should be able to 
gain something from the experience and enjoy it."

His research, which is funded by the Centre for Addictions Research 
of B.C., will inform harm reduction efforts like these for other 
festivals and events, as well as drug use prevention campaigns.

He plans to write at least three papers on his research in the next 
year, as well as provide reports on the findings to the organizers of Shambhala.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart