Advanced Drugs Awareness  

Duration: one day or two day course

Appropriate for: People who have previously attended basic drug awareness training or have previous experience working with users.

About the course: This course is the "next step" for workers who have previous training or knowledge. It fulfils several critical aims. Firstly it reviews and corrects "technical knowledge" to ensure that commonly-held misconceptions are corrected and looks at accurate terminology and concepts.

The course goes on to explore some of the less common drugs, and highlights key relevant facts relating to these drugs.

Participants go on to explore the wonders on neuropharmacology, providing a firm foundation for understanding all the key drugs, how they work, and how dependence and withdrawal is likely to occur.

Finally the course locates this technical knowledge within a practical context to explore how to implement knowledge in real-world strategies.

The course has proved popular even with the most cynical and jaded workers. Workers with many years experience have found the course useful.

Objectives:

• Provide more detailed knowledge about commonly used controlled drugs
• Increase understanding of how drugs are used
• Increase understanding of how key drugs work on the brain
• Develop detailed understanding of how drugs and drug use can cause problems
  
• Increase confidence in assessing drug use and planning interventions
  prove skills in talking about drugs to various groups.
• Increase ability to identify appropriate responses and make appropriate referrals.
• Improve skills in educating and communicating about drugs
  

The course includes:

• Drugs in detail; understanding chemical states
• Introduction to neurotransmitters
• More information about how drugs work: neuropharmacology
• Modelling addiction and dependency
• Routes of administration and physiology
• Less common drugs

Format: Taught sections, work in pairs and small groups, whole group discussion

Handouts: Include basic drugs and advanced drugs literature

DANOS Mapping: AA1, AA3, AA4, AB1, AB3, AB5, AC1, AD1, AD2, AD4, AH4, AH7