Heather Edney

Contact

Bevel Up

junkphood

@junkie_ephemera

About

The Santa Cruz Needle Exchange Program, one of the earliest harm reduction programs in the United States, was co-founded by Heather Edney in 1990. Despite lack of funding and support for syringe distribution, Edney’s program pioneered a model of harm reduction that centered the voices of drug users. Operated by young women volunteers who used drugs, SCNEP was one of the first risk reduction models that included holistic healthcare practices. Edney' s alliance with educational institutions allowed SCNEP to provide services when volunteers and participants were frequently arrested, due to the illegal status of syringe distribution at the time. The young women of SCNEP developed programs and educational materials that are foundational to the way harm reduction services are delivered today.

Edney produced the acclaimed zine junkphood (1995) with Brooke Lober, an artistic platform for sharing safer drug use practices in an accessible manner, containing writing and art by the using community. Edney later co-authored Getting Off Right: A Safety Manual for Injection Drug Users with Rod Sorge and Synn Stern (1998), published by the National Harm Reduction Coalition. This landmark publication blended the lived experiences of drug users with medical expertise, resulting in a resource that has proven to be evergreen.

Today, Edney provides strategic guidance and operational support to harm reduction organizations that support dignity, autonomy, and survival for people who use drugs. Most recently, Edney was commissioned by NASTAD to create a safer use resource that updates current harm reduction guidelines, taking into account an increased presence of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs in the drug supply.

Staying true to DIY ethos and her belief that safer use information should be open source, Edney created Bevel Up. This is a resource of synthesized messages and recommendations from current and former users and health care providers. The series is a customizable set of cards, posters and social posts in English and Spanish. These resources are available at : www.nastad.org/resources/bevel-site-and-safer-use-education-resource-collection

The Exhibit

April 24 - October 6, 2025 | MoMA PS1

Love Rules: The Harm Reduction Archives of Heather Edney and Richard Berkowitz

Visual AIDS presents an exhibition in MoMA PS1's Homeroom gallery that charts the early development and impact of harm reduction across the US.

Love Rules features materials from the archives of writers and activists Heather Edney and Richard Berkowitz—photography, DIY publications, and other ephemera—detailing the creation of safe sex guidelines and safer injection practices.

Centering the expertise of sex workers and drug users, the presentation highlights how harm reduction strategies used by social services today are informed by the work of those most directly impacted by the AIDS epidemic and drug-related overdoses.

The Screening

April 26 | MoMA PS1

Love is the Drug

Visual AIDS presents the premiere of Love is the Drug, a short documentary film by Liz Roberts. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Roberts and Heather Edney, moderated by Blake Paskal, Programs Manager, Visual AIDS.

Love is the Drug tells the story of Heather Edney’s drug user organizing which began in Santa Cruz, California, while she was caring for MyLeia Loya, a child who was born HIV positive. The film brings together a trove of archival materials: Edney’s appearances on television, photographs, zines, flyers, and community health education videos with more recent 16mm footage of Edney and Loya in Santa Cruz. Love is the Drug ultimately asserts that the archive is not a scene of redemption, but rather a cinematic apparatus that can teach us about durational love.

The Book

April 26 | MoMA PS1

sucking dick for syringes

sucking dick for syringes is a novel, an autobiography, a memoir, an autofiction, an ethnography, an anti-fiction; it is simultaneously all and none of these things. The text was written by Heather Edney between 1991-1998, spanning a period of time in which Edney was helming a needle exchange as a nineteen-year-old, raising a child whose mother had died from AIDS-related illness, publishing the zine junkphood, and presenting at national and international harm reduction conferences as one of very few people openly public about her experience as a drug user. The text was written in small bursts, mostly at the site of a recurring complex trauma, which lends the text the urgency and honesty of life in the present. The title Sucking Dick For Syringes operates as a metaphor as well as a passionate call for transparency, asking what did you live through in your twenties? Who did you love and how did you love them?

sucking dick for syringes is a risograph artist book published by National Monument Press.

Heather Edney 2025