Drug use and sex in abstentionist treatment programs

Many organisations with treatment programs for drug users based on abstinence principles rule that sexual intercourse is forbidden while drug users are still under treatment. Most of these people suffer due to the lack of hard institutional regulations when they return to their social environment. Thus, working with preventive issues, especially safer sexual practices, as a harm reduction strategy, is very important before treatment ends. This is because sex will probably be one of the social interactions most promptly recuperated. Workshops oriented to diffuse preventive information related to safer sexual practices were developed in some of those organisations. It’s main objectives were: make condom use familiar; work with social representations and beliefs regarding a change of attitude towards condom use; give information about contraceptive methods, their uses and effectiveness to prevent HIV transmission and other STDs. For drug users in treatment programs, those workshops offered the possibility of acquiring information and analysing their social representations related to safer sexual practices. Results were presented to the staff of treatment programs and made it possible to discuss their social representations related to one of the most rooted stereotypes which states that “drug users are incapable of taking care of themselves or of others in their sexual practices”.