Understanding what your patient sees in illicit drugs
Basically, I want to know if anyone has heard of a nurse or other practitioner experimenting with substances to feel what the patients they treat see in the substance ?

I am interested in the effects of methylamphetamine on myself, so i might be able to say to a patient in a round-about-way that i knew what it was that was so *ahem* "attractive" about the substance ? (self disclosure is an issue.. how could i go about telling a patient that i have personal experience with what they are going through ?)

I probably sound like a complete and utter idiot, and none of you would ever want to nurse beside me, but i want to understand what my clients go through so i might use my experience to build repore with them as to help them turn away from substance abuse.

I am not so sure i beleive in the "just once" slogan used to ward people away from the drug ?

- perhaps it's akin to supporting a mother who has lost a child ? - unless you have lost a child yourself, you cant even have a ballpark understanding of what a mother feels unless you go through it yourself ?

I can see one way i could avoid using meth - and thats to use other peoples stories to educate those using the drug - but... put yourself in patients shoes being confronted by a nurse who self discloses the fact they have used meth and knows first hand why it's so addictive and poisonous. As a patient, would you listen to that nurse over another nurse who has no first hand experience ?

Thankyou....

PS: I am in first year and wish to be a psychiatric nurse - please help educate me and lessen my naiveity. I realise what i've said has probably made every set of eyebrows looking at this thread raise in astonishment.