Willemijn Los

Willemijn Los - location head of walk-in centre Zeeburg, chairman of works council

"In the early 1990s I was studying and I had no money, so I went to the temp agency. They had a very nice job for me: they let me work for The Regenboog in the syringe exchange. I had never seen a drug user before. But there I was, in my early twenties, sitting at night in an old camper van on Waterlooplein. With a plastic partition and buckets on the floor. I had had no training and was working alone. I found it fascinating, meeting all kinds of colorful people, like a man who was called Henkie Beer Bottle. At the new stand next to Amsterdam Central, as many as two thousand syringes were turned in one evening. At one point, the Regenboog deployed ascorbic acid. To inject heroin, you first have to dissolve it in acid. That way people no longer had to use rotten lemons. And we provided sterile water, disinfectant wipes, filters and spoons. We really saved lives with that."