Trigger Warning - Needle

Sorry if you squirmed.

It's a bit long, but I was trying to write a blurb to explain things & copy pasted below rather than trying to link. Put the copy of original poster in extras.

Stirring-Up Memories
I did this poster when I was a student in late 80’s, before the Trainspotting book came out in 1993. I wonder what we would have produced as students for a poster to ‘promote’ the film edition coming out in 1996 or now for T2 in 2017?

I haven’t looked in my Art Portfolio for years, much of which had already been disposed off. Not even sure why I actually kept this poster, as it’s not the type of thing you can frame and stick on your wall for pleasure. It must have been a ‘health - drug / drink awareness’ type topic we were doing, which in Edinburgh, at that time in the Eighties, was a very hot topic.

I had been talking recently to a nurse about ‘sharps’ and feeling strange about being ‘trusted’ by nurses to do my own injections, but thinking back to Doctors of the past, of whether they would trust in me to do them. But the alternative was to go to the GP Surgery Nurse every day and then to the local hospital at the weekends.

Other chats with nursing staff and how they felt about the first time they had to put a needle into someone else, about not showing nerves as the patient would pick it up, but the patient’s family visitors would notice even faster!

Not a great fan of having to take any tablets, but having a nurse watch to make sure your first injection was done correctly, you didn’t keel over, then away you go and then checking in with you every appointment to make sure you’re still okay with it and no issues.

As a regular visitor to hospitals you get used to seeing the boxes and needles of varying types and sizes and think nothing of it. You visit your Dentist, GP surgery, nurse or phlebotomist for blood test and again you think nothing of it.

Talked about feeling embarrassed a few years ago of going to the chemist for a friend to change her Sharps Box as it was full and they didn’t take boxes. I had to go around to her GP’s, explain and get a new one. How strange that felt as the person I was helping was a Diabetic and I would have presumed that the chemist was where to take it.

Needle Exchanges and Sharps Boxes were introduced many years ago in Scotland as the way to help reduce the risks involved with the sharing of needles and spread of infections in drug users.

The Sharps Boxes available for home-use making a big difference to anyone that has to stick needles into themselves for whatever medical purposes and to be able to dispose of them safely so they’re not injured by them nor are their family, pets or friends put at risk.

The needles I was using recently have a bit on it to break the needle to reduce the risk of re-use.

The changes that have happened over the years, I can’t think what I would do now for a poster about drug issues as there are so many different types and ways of getting them into your system. And I don’t think my poster represents in any way what happened all those years ago and certainly not what’s really happening in the current drug scene.

But it is strange how something you have to do medically to keep yourself well, brings up thoughts about an old poster that was trying to show the dangers of the misuse of drugs and sharing of needles but maybe, just maybe, it made me a little bit more careful when doing my own injections, breaking the tip and disposing of the single use needles in the Sharps Box.