Peer support

Peer support is assistance provided by people who share direct lived experience of the situation the other person faces — in harm-reduction contexts, this typically means people who have used substances, navigated dependency, or managed recovery themselves. It works through shared recognition and practical knowledge that comes from inside the situation rather than from clinical training.

Peer support operates alongside medical care and professional services, not in place of them. Its credibility rests on the peer's own experience rather than formal credentials.

How it is done

Peer support takes place across a range of settings: drop-in harm-reduction services, drug-checking programs, outreach programs, telephone and online helplines, and informal networks among people who use drugs. In formal settings, peer workers are typically trained in overdose recognition and response, basic risk communication, and how to help someone access further services.

A peer worker may distribute naloxone or other harm-reduction supplies, remain present with someone so there is a person available if something goes wrong, share practical information about a substance or local supply conditions, or help someone approach a service they would not navigate alone.

The relationship depends on being non-judgmental by design. Because the peer worker's knowledge comes from experience, it is often received differently from information delivered through formal channels — not as instruction, but as testimony from someone who has been in the same position.

What it cannot tell you

Peer support does not establish what is medically safe for any individual. A peer's account of their own experience — what amounts they have taken, what combinations they have managed without serious harm — reflects their specific physiology, their tolerance at that time, and the particular batch they encountered. None of that transfers reliably to another person.

Peer workers are not clinicians. They cannot diagnose, prescribe, or manage a medical emergency. In situations that require immediate medical intervention — respiratory depression, loss of consciousness, seizure — peer presence is not a substitute for emergency services.

The most common wrong conclusion drawn from a reassuring peer account is that it applies broadly: that because something was tolerable for one person in one context, it will be tolerable in this one. Individual variation in tolerance, health status, substance purity, and circumstances makes that inference unreliable.