REGINA – Regina Police have seen an increase in meth use in the Queen City over the past year and a half.
According to monthly statistics released by the Board of Police Commissioners, meth is a contributing factor to the rise in property crimes as well as break and enters in Regina.
Teri Fikowski sat down Troy Neiszner, detox manager at Addiction Services for more perspective on the rise in crystal meth users.
Q: Are you surprised to hear about the increase in meth use in Regina?
A: Well, we have seen an increase at our centre as well over the past two years. There has been a significant increase in the number of clients accessing our services and identifying crystal meth as a problem.
“…in the last two years we have doubled our daily occupancy.”
A: Around a 200 per cent increase – that’s quite significant. Do you have any reason why there has been such the rise?
Q: What we’re hearing is the drug is very accessible and it’s inexpensive.
A: Is there anything about meth that makes it more challenging to treat for withdrawals than other drugs or substances?
Q: At the addiction treatment centre we have our 45 bed detox area and in that area we offer the opportunity for our clients to withdraw and come off the substances they are using. With crystal meth we are noticing that our clients do require a little bit longer of a detox just in order to feel better and start to think of their next steps in their recovery.
A: With such an increase are you felling a crunch on resources?
Q: Well, we have 25 beds in our social detox and in the last two years we have doubled our daily occupancy so we have seen an increase in individuals who are accessing the services.
“Every age, every gender. It does not discriminate on who it has a negative impact on.”
A: Take us through what staff see from clients withdrawing from crystal meth.
Q: They see lots of behaviours. There’s irritability. There’s aggression with individuals who are withdrawing. There’s normal withdrawal symptoms (such as) nausea and inability to sleep. With crystal meth use as well it causes brain damage, so the long term memory is impacted. There’s some paranoia. So, we’ve integrated some of our services with our health professionals and we do have physician services and public health services. We have psychiatrist services four times a week as well.
Q: Is there anything else that can be done to curb this increase we are seeing?
A: It’s really to get the message out there how addictive crystal meth is and the harmful effects that it can cause. We unfortunately see it first hand when our clients access our services and are having those difficulties.
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