During COVID-19 methadone clinics were allowed to relax the stringent rules that had been in place for many decades for the first time. Few of them did so, and our story and interview today center around the entrenched attitudes and ossification that has kept the very treatment systems tasked with helping from doing so. Imagine what everyone else is doing...

This is the first of a two part interview with Irene Garnett and Caty Simon.

Caty Simon has spent 20 years in the low-income rights, psychiatric survivors’ rights, sex workers’ rights, and drug users union movements. She is a leadership team member of and a sex worker liaison for National Survivors Union (NSU), the United States national drug users union. Simon is also a founding co-organizer and co-executive director of Whose Corner Is It Anyway, a Western MA harm reduction, mutual aid, and organizing group by and for low-income, street, and survival sex workers who use opioids and/or stimulants and/or experience housing insecurity. She is the Director of Narrative Development at NC Survivors Union, the flagship affiliate group of NSU, leading Narcofeminism Storyshare, a project reducing stigma against people who use drugs through autobiographical story development and stakeholder training. From 2013 to 2020, Simon was co-editor of Tits and Sass (titsandsass.com), a seminal media outlet by and for sex workers which was featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Jezebel, Gawker, and the New Inquiry, to name a few. She is first author of a commentary in the International Journal of Drug Policy on union members’ experiences as drug user organizers doing community driven research (CDR) and an editorial in a health justice and overdose crisis special issue of the American Journal of Public Health, “The methadone manifesto: treatment experiences and policy recommendations from methadone patient activists.” She has extensive experience as a research and intervention consultant representing people with living experience of drug use and drug treatment, and has worked with the Yale Program of Addiction Medicine, the COVID-19 and Substance Use Data Collaborative, the Baystate Hospital Emergency Department, the National Drug Early Warning System, JBS International, the University of Kentucky’s Department of Behavioral Science, and the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, among others. Simon recently served on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s harm reduction steering committee, defining harm reduction and its principles, precepts, and metrics for the federal agency.

"A show about people who stand in line and fight for safe supply"

This is the third episode of a podcast by and for people who are fighting for a safe supply of drugs in the United States. Methadone is the first battleground in this fight, and this storytelling show emphasizes the voices of patients and directly impacted people in that battle. The material for this show stems from the Naturally Noncompliant meeting that takes place every other Thursday and is organized by National Survivors Union, the United States national drug users union—the national voice of people who use drugs.

Nick Voyles is the Hepatitis C liaison for National Survivors Union, the United States drug users union, as well as the executive director of Indiana Recovery Alliance and the treasurer of NC Survivors Union. He is a co-author of The methadone manifesto: Treatment experiences and policy recommendations from methadone patient activists in the American Journal of Public Health, and a national community-driven survey on patient experiences of methadone treatment changes during the first wave of COVID-19 in Harm Reduction Journal. Fueled by his experiences with injection drug use, incarceration, and homelessness, Nick is a national leader and activist focused on opioid agonist treatment reform and viral hepatitis elimination. He is a proud Hepatitis C and Interferon survivor who has served his community in numerous capacities, including as a crisis management coordinator.

Abby Coulter, is a strong advocate for methadone reform. In 2011, she founded MAT Support & Awareness (MATSA), an organization by and for people on methadone and buprenorphine.  Abby has spent over two decades fighting for the rights of people either trying to access or who are on methadone throughout the United States and internationally. She is a co-author of “The methadone manifesto: treatment experiences and policy recommendations by methadone patient activists,” a 2022  editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health, as well as a commentary published in the International Journal of Drug Policy in 2021 on community driven research led by people who use drugs.  She was a planning committee member and a speaker for the Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2022 two-day virtual event, “Methadone Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder: Examining Federal Regulations and Laws - A Workshop” co-sponsored by the Office for National Drug Control Policy. Her own lived experience as a pregnant person using drugs and a pregnant and parenting person on methadone is what led her to life as a methadone advocate. 

We are delighted to announce the upcoming conference, “Liberating Methadone: Building a Roadmap and Community for Change.” The conference will be hosted by the NYU Center for Opioid Epidemiology in New York City on September 21st and 22nd of 2023. This is an exciting partnership between the National Survivors Union, National Coalition to Liberate Methadone, and NYU Center for Opioid Epidemiology to deliver this conference.

This conference aims to bring together members from various backgrounds to discuss and exchange ideas on how to improve access to and use of methadone to reduce the harms of opioid use. Our goal is to break down traditional barriers between researchers, clinicians, policy makers and people who use drugs and to create a shared space for collective understanding. Conference proceedings will be gathered to generate a report with actionable recommendations for policy and clinical practice. This two day conference can be attended in person or virtually via a webinar. To register, click on the flyer to register at the EventBrite link.

For the full Conference Agenda, click here.

Artwork By Jordan Scott 

Voice of Naturally Noncompliant is Zee St. James