Drawing a Line | Mike Linnell | 20 Years of Harm Reduction
Jon Derricott, Neil Hunt, Andrew Preston
Mike on Jon, Neil & Andrew
Although I've never worked directly with these three, I do bump into them fairly regularly in some fairly strange places. Neil, Andrew and Jon along with others established UKHRA and made it what it is today. Neil is one of those rare breed; an academic who puts 'the cause' before his own career. Although he does occasionally lapse into inappropriate beard wearing. Andrew came into the field as a nurse, but along with Jon had the nous to develop the provision of needle exchange equipment into a social enterprise with Exchange Supplies. Andrew is one of the few people in the harm reduction movement that you could take home to see your mum. I found out recently (in a 24 hour bar in Sydney) that like me, Jon had theatrical leanings before starting work in the drugs field. My last job before working for Lifeline was as a comedy acrobat and the night before starting work with HIT, Jon was a juggling unicyclist on stage at a Van Morrison concert. Amongst other things Jon is now an independent trainer.
In his own words 'an ageing Lothario', Mike will always be a Mike
to us, although he seems to have recently decided to become a Michael
- maybe he's growing up? If that is the case, we can only hope that he
doesn't lose his desire to stretch the elastic of what is possible and
acceptable in drug information.
Everyone working in harm reduction in the UK knows about Mike:
he's been around from the start. Our first memory of Mike's work is, of
course, the legendary Grandpa Smackhead Jones - it made us chuckle
at exactly the right time: starting in drugs work (at opposite ends of England), we didn't have that much of a clue, and could have got our
priorities completely wrong. It helped to shape us into right-thinking
boys!
PS He's still at it: last weekend Jon's 12 year old son picked up the 'Big
Blue Book of Drugs', read it cover to cover - and declared it "boss!"