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Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems: 2021, 23, N3 (pages: 51 - 53)

How supportive and understandable are health care practitioners toward people who use drugs in Albania?

Tivari Bitri S., Puca E., Thoma E., and Sotiri E.

Summary: Substance use disorders are complex disorders characterized by impaired functioning and considerable harm to the individuals affected and to the society as well. Despite the consistent measures on drug use prevention and limits on access, still a huge number of people become drug addicted and need professional help. In order to work, treatment must be easily available, encouraged and offered by motivated and empathic practitioners. But the reality seems to be not so optimistic. Many times the drug user is not just a victim of social discrimination, but he is a victim of healthcare system stigmatization, as well .In front of the rejection, people with addiction internalize this stigma, blame their-selves and refuse to seek treatment. These struggles are much more devastating in small countries such as Albania, with a society in a long transition of norms and moral values. But, how much does it “cost” the life of an addicted person in Albania?! Is a drug user welcomed in the albanian health system, same as a patient with a chronic disease is? Are healthcare providers supposed to be the door where the drug user can knock, when everybody outside try to harden their life?! Too many rhetoric questions that develop in a society where the individual tend to judge one another, interpret and evaluate each other's behavior, and find ways inevitably to group each other into ready-made normative categories. For many years in Albania, socially and “legally” accepted individual, was that one who didn`t use drugs, or excessive alcohol and the one who behave “just like the others”. People couldn`t act and even think out of the box. And health care providers, were part of this society.