ABSTRACT
The history of services for drug and alcohol users is littered with an underused inheritance of well intentioned proposals whose chief failing was that they attempted to classify clients into neat, well defined categories based on the prevailing presenting substance. The administration of services, their funding and aims, too frequently delimit themselves to providing for the user of a specific substance, either alcohol or other drugs or solvents. The inappropriateness of dividing substance users into distinct populations based on substance is illustrated by the almost random way in which some people will be brought into contact with the service provider. Over the last 20 years, there have been a number of attempts by practitioners and researchers to define umbrella models which offer a satisfactory explanation of “addictive behaviour”. A recent study of prisoners in Pentonville, London has also shown a significant level of multiple usage.
