Dr Dolanβs book details the intimate lives of four Iranian women, their struggle with drugs and the daily grind they faced in their personal lives.
Surprisingly, Iran responded well to its AIDS crisis but forgot to include female drug users. While Dr Dolan delivered training to Iranian prison doctors, she met women who were addicted to drugs and were desperately in need of treatment. With her health professional colleagues in Iran, she set out to establish the first drug treatment clinic for women. She was granted access to areas and people not normally afforded to outsiders.
One of the most interesting aspect of the clinic was the safe room that allowed women to remove their hejabs, smoke cigarettes and reveal their life stories. Working at the clinic challenged assumptions Dr Dolan had of Iran and its people. She came away with insights that are rare even in the world of international development.
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Dolan draws from her vast international experience, weaving together the history and epidemiology of drug use in Iran with a tapestry of incredible, heart-rending stories from Iranian women experiencing the darkest depths of addiction. For readers who thought that epidemiologists were just βbean countersβ, youβre in for the shock of your lives.
β Steffanie Strathdee, PhD, Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences, Harold Simon Professor, UCSD Department of Medicine
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This deftly crafted recollection recounts a decade-long quest to have methadone programs embedded in an Iranian prison. Kateβs multi-layered narrative takes us through the multitude of people, governments, policies, religions, moral imperatives and myths that swirl around any new drug and alcohol-related activity. Her mission was a matter of life and death.
β Jude Byrne, Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League
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An Australian professor of public health recounts the struggles of establishing and maintaining a womenβs drug treatment clinic in Tehran in this debut memoir.
In the mid-1980s, Dr. Kate Dolan was co-founder of the Australian Prostitutesβ Collective and the Australian Drug Information Collective. She and her colleagues discussed ways to respond to the HIV epidemic, including a program for
handing out free, sterile needles and syringes. In researching other countriesβ similar programs, the author learned that a primary reason people shared syringes was because they were in prison. So when she traveled to Iran in the early 2000s to see its response to HIV, she toured the nationβs prisons and spoke with inmates. While Iran implemented βharm reductionβ strategies for those taking drugs, Dolan noticed a neglected groupβwomen. She set about starting a clinic in south Tehran to help women who used drugs. After several years of rejected funding requests, the clinicβs doors finally opened in 2007. The buildingβs highlight was the βsafe room,β where clients could discuss difficulties frankly and remove their hijabs. As Dolan lived in Sydney and was raising twins, she only visited the clinic periodically. In this book, she focuses on four clients and their progress over a few years. Zahra, for example, was a pregnant teen trying to quit heroin. Dolan and the staff, as with most clients, fought for Zahra to continue treatment, but numerous issues impeded their efforts, like drug-using family members acting as enablers.
Dolanβs account treats Iran and its culture respectfully, noting intriguing differences without condemning any of them. For example, she was initially concerned about a midwife on the clinicβs staff, as this job in Iran concentrates on the expectant motherβs sexual health rather than aiding delivery. The author also adds personal touches, such as photographs, mostly from her days visiting prisons. In a particularly moving turn, she tells of returning home after an overseas trip only to be shaken by the tragic, sudden death of her partner, Margaret. While itβs understandable why Dolan, an Australian resident, didnβt step inside the Iranian clinic for the first two years, the lack of stories about the staff getting the facility off the ground is disappointing. Still, the author provides intriguing specifics about treatment, which predominantly involved methadone for those with heroin addictions. There were surprising hurdles as well, from the laborious process of securing money for the clinic to something as simple as the buildingβs electricity continually going out. Nevertheless, the latter half of the work becomes muddled. The timeline, for example, is confusing; at one point, Dolan had a chance to visit Iran again in 2012, then later itβs 2010 and, even later, 2009. Equally perplexing is Fariba, one of the four women the author spotlights. In a handful of scenes, details of her backstory repeatedly conflict, like her age when she first got married and the supposedly drug-free husband she ended up sharing opium with. But these missteps donβt mar Dolanβs unquestionable compassion, as she devoted years to helping others.
Despite some flaws, an absorbing look at treating women with drug addictions in Iran.
β Kirkus Reviews
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Dr Dolanβs book details the intimate lives of four Iranian women, their struggle with drugs and the daily hardships they face in their personal lives. It affords the reader the opportunity to accompany the epidemiologist on one of her trips to Iran for an insiderβs experience. In π©ππππππ π«πππ π¨π π ππππππ ππ π»πππππ, Dr Kate Dolan chronicles her unflagging efforts to give Iranian women experiencing the darkest depths of addiction a chance at recovery. She ends up giving them something more: dignity and respect. The book recounts the frustrating red tape and sourcing for funders and skilled staff to establish the first methadone clinic at Shoosh Square, a heavy heroin using area in Tehran.
π©ππππππ π«πππ π¨π π ππππππ ππ π»πππππ is an important reminder that the pernicious influence of heroin has no boundaries and in Iran, home of the βmorality policeβ, drug use by females is common whether obtained by a street dealer or home-delivered.
Michelle McGraine, NetGalley