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Help Juls present her research to an international audience!

Juls Budau Start Date: Aug 26, 2025 - End Date: Dec 25, 2025
  • Cape Town, South Africa

My Travel Story

by: Juls Budau Start Date: Aug 26, 2025 - End Date: Dec 25, 2025
I am traveling to Cape Town, South Africa, in October 2025, to present my thesis research on pharmacological interventions for stimulant addiction and how its users define success and efficacy, to an international audience of addiction medicine doctors.

During the first COVID-19 lock-downs, my bubble-mate kicked a extremely volatile cocaine habit using ADHD medications—an idea I got from newly released provincial clinical guidelines after he was asked to leave in-patient detox for taking his own yogurt out of the fridge (as C-19 guidelines then ignored air-bourne risk and focused on droplet exposure, and required patients to wait for a nurse to don a mask and gloves in order to open the fridge and remove a yogurt for them, which had been previously self serve). Using methylphenidate, my bubblemate was able stop using cocaine long-term after a series of extreme binging that featured seizures and spending tens of thousands of dollars. Despite successfully switching from a habit that cost him a lot of money, his health, and almost his life, to using a regulated, low-cost pill that is often prescribed to children, his psychiatrist would not prescribe it to him, and even forbade the local prescribed safer supply clinic nurse prescribers from continuing his prescription, saying that "the research shows that it doesn't work." This piqued my interest and led me down a rabbit hole of looking at all the available research on stimulant agonist therapy (STAT), and I ultimately conducted my masters thesis research on this topic, interviewing people who had used pharmaceutical stimulants to mitigate or replace their illicit stimulant use so I could understand what it meant to them for the intervention "to work".

The conclusion? His psychiatrist was wrong. First, the conclusions of the clinical trial meta-reviews that "the available evidence doesn't definitively prove this intervention works, because of small effect from low doses, methodological issues from high drop-rates, and research quality issues due to meta-reviewers determining a clinical trial using a stimulant medication is at risk of bias because the participant could possibly feel the medication thus compromising the double-blinding of the study" is NOT the same as "the research shows that it DOES NOT work". Second, updated research, such as case studies, program evaluations, and clinical trials using higher doses, actually shows that it definitely actually works. Third, my thesis research showed that how users of this intervention define or understand STAT to be "working" is incongruent with how clinical trials measure its effect or success. However, many clinicians and prescribers still hold this belief that stimulant agonist therapy—prescribing ADHD medications to people with meth and cocaine addictions—just "doesn't work". This is alarming, especially in the context of a toxic drug supply where any reduction of exposure to the unregulated drug supply will reduce overdose risk because of the toxicity of illicit drugs, especially for stimulant users without opioid tolerance who are at risk of dying from any fentanyl exposure. Even in the context of a non-contaminated supply, the health risks of using a regulated pharmaceutical stimulant are eons less than that of a highly concentrated illicit stimulant. The health improvements of my participants included increased sleep and nutritional intake, improved social relationships, and reduced psychosis, infection, and cardivascular injury, even of in the absence of complete abstinence from the illicit stimulant they used. However, switching from compulsive use to chipping, moderating, and just using less at necessary times, had positive benefits across my participant group. While 90% of my participants (9/10) felt that STAT worked, had they been participants in a clinical trial for STAT, 80% would not be recorded as "non-responders." While this was a small, non-generalizable qualitative study, these results indicate that clinical trials for STAT need to be measuring efficacy in alternative, patient-centred ways.

I defended my thesis on June 20, 2025, and was graded as a clear pass.

Amazingly, I was accepted to present this research on an international platform in October, at the conference for the International Network of Health and Hepatitis in Substance Users (INHSU) in Cape Town, South Africa. This is super exciting, because I am hoping to persuade prescribers and practioners to re-think their assumptions on STAT and make regulated options available for eligible and interested patients. However, my thesis research was unfunded, as was my grad program (because MSW is a "professional degree" despite having a research component). I paid my way through my MSW degree with my credit card, while juggling several low-pay frontline positions, leaving me with a lot of debt. I was able to pay my conference registration fee ($950 canadian in total) with my professional development fund at work ($750) and a fundraiser my friends in Prince George organized for me ($200). I was unfortunately rejected for a UNBC graduate travel grant. A research group I collaborate with out of Ontario agreed to partially fund my travel if I submitted a second abstract of a paper I am an author on. That was accepted, I now have a second presentation to do at the conference, and they have covered my air travel expenses from Vancouver to Cape Town and back.

However, I have multiple other expenses including:
Travel from Victoria to Vancouver, and back: $100 x 2
Pet sitter for my dog for two weeks: $400
International travel roaming plan for my phone for 14 days: $90
Accomodations for 10 days at an air bnb within walking distance (3km) of the conference: $300

So, I am hoping to raise an additional $990 to fund my conference travel. I am aware that there are many other vital causes at this point in history. However, stimulant dependency is a prominent issue that is increasing as more and more people are dehoused or forced to juggle multiple jobs in order to survive. I am humbly asking for donations from people in my network of comfortable means, who are concerned about this issue, and can contribute a small amount of money to assist my travel.

Thank so much for reading!



  • Cape Town, South Africa

Updates

1

  • Thank You!!!

    Wow I am so blessed with all this support. One thing I will be doing is paying my dog sitter more, as he was giving me a severely subsidized rate! He was recently unlawfully let go from his job because of complications with his T1D causing him to be late, and the increased pay will be very helpful for him.
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