About the Project

Recovery Voices, developed by David Clark and Wulf Livingston, captures conversations about what works in supporting recovery from addiction, and in the development of peer-led recovery communities, from a range of individuals with lived experience, as well as friends of recovery.

We highlight common messages and learnings that come from these conversations, providing a resource for people working with, and supporting, recovery and recovery communities.

We celebrate the lives and successes of recovering people and recovery communities, and in doing so enhance the visibility of recovery and highlight what can be achieved.

We encourage the development of new peer-led recovery communities and their interaction with other initiatives.

Blogs


3rd September 2026

Recovery Carriers

North Wales Recovery Communities have been ‘feeding’ the community ‘petri dish’ with charismatic Recovery Carriers. Each one of these individuals is helping change the lives of other people in the wider community, both in terms of the present, but also the future.
26th August 2026

A Healing Environment: Bruce Perry

It’s like having this big, beautiful, incredible extended family with people that are good at horseplay, people that are good at telling stories, people that are good at jokes, people that are good at teaching you how to do a fire, and you use them in your life at the time you need them...
25th August 2026

A Key Therapeutic Element: Feeling Safe

The environment and people at Penrhyn are geared up to help new residents feel safe and have the belief that they are in the right place. New residents enter a place with others like themselves, who understand them and the world from which they have come. A place where they are accepted and find hope, and where magic happens. And magic certainly happened to Lee Daly when he met Saffron Roberts and heard her story during his first visit...

People


12th February 2024

Rhoda Emlyn-Jones OBE

What is so remarkable about this interview, and in a sense what I continue to learn from Rhoda, is how the best of practice is built on the most obvious, but often neglected, cornerstones of honesty, respect and understanding.... Rhoda provides us with a clear message about the value of hope and strengths over negative...
22nd June 2024

Marcus Fair, Part 2

I was fascinated by Marcus's transition from heroin addict to filmmaker. I loved his film Flipped It!, which was about addiction and how people turn it around and find recovery. He used both the police and people who had been in trouble with the police in making the film. I am so impressed by what has been achieved by Eternal Media...
15th September 2023

Dr. David McCartney

Dr. David McCartney, Founder of Lothians and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme (LEAP), talks about the development of his drinking problem whilst working as a GP in an inner-city practice in Scotland. He describes an unsuccessful attempt at sobriety, which involved a medical approach focused on prescribing. In crisis, he...

A RECOVERY COMMUNITY PROVIDES:

Hope
Understanding
A sense of belonging
Acceptance and support
Engagement in meaningful activities
Opportunity to give back to others

A RECOVERING PERSON:

Gains a stronger motivation to change
Possesses an enhanced self-esteem
Becomes an empowered citizen
Overcomes stigma (shame)
Finds a sense of purpose
Acquires a new identity

Communities


10th August 2023

Towards Recovery

Towards Recovery offers a Recovery Cafe in Henley-on-Thames, as well as an online Recovery Cafe, where people recovering from addiction, can get support and encouragement. It aims to help people connect with others, re-connect with themselves and the world around them, and make sustainable changes to create a life of...
10th August 2023

Eternal Media

Eternal Media is a media production social enterprise and charity, located in Wrexham, that makes high impact documentary films. Their professional, award-winning producers empower and mentor volunteer film crews, which comprise people who are rebuilding their lives and are recovering from addiction and/or an involvement in...
10th August 2023

North Wales Recovery Communities

North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC) comprises a number of communities, including a residential rehab at Penrhyn House, Growing for Change, with its gardens and allotments, and Bwyd Da Bangor (Good Food Bangor), a community cafe/restaurant that provides the best food on the High Street. Penrhyn House offers space for various...

Stories


22nd February 2025

US Recovery Initiatives: David Best

One exciting place that David has visited is Chesterfield County Jail in Virginia, where they have a Therapeutic Community (TC) in the jail. None of the staff decide who can go into the TC or get chucked out; it’s all peer-based decision making. What's more, when people graduate from the drug programme in the jail...
14th September 2023

A Family Trauma: Huseyin Djemil

Huseyin’s earliest memory, from when he was three or four years old, was being terrified whilst he stood in his pyjamas in a hallway with lots of commotion going on around him. Someone picks him up and whisks him away. Later, he learns that his father had just killed someone in their house. As he grows up, he hears stories of that day...
20th November 2023

A Miraculous Discovery!?: David McCartney

After a few months, David stopped taking his pills. He thought he could have a social drink, but this turned out to be a disaster. He went back to work, but the craving continued. One day, David found that if he took codeine his craving for alcohol disappeared. He thought he had...

Themes


3rd March 2024

What Helps Families Create Sustained Change?: Rhoda Emlyn-Jones OBE

'One of the big things that makes such a big difference is having an approach that is inclusive. That includes the person, the network, the family.' Rhoda points out that our personal wellbeing is tied up with our sense of belonging, with who is around us, and being loved...
12th October 2023

Building a Recovery Community, Part 2: Wulf Livingston

Wulf points out that critical to the success of NWRC is that members have access to plenty of free environmental space on their doorstep. No-one has charged them for taking a walk on a beach or going up a mountain. It is more difficult to create a similar entity in a large city...
31st March 2024

Funding ARC Fitness: Gary Rutherford

However, ARC has to do a great deal of fundraising. For example, in 2021 they organised a No Shame campaign, during which Gary ran five marathons in five days wearing a weighted vest that represented ‘shame’. He fractured his leg on the second day but continued running for the rest of the challenge. Typical all or nothing, ‘Man must finish this mentality and not walk...’

Extras


11th September 2023

Anna’s Recovery Story: ‘Should I or Shouldn’t I?’

It’s also possible to learn something new or change the way you think if you’re prepared to work at it. Not only has my brother overcome his drug dependence and rebuilt his life and his career, he has travelled the world, has a gorgeous family, and can speak another...
13th September 2023

Sapphire’s Recovery Story: ‘It Should All Be About the Person’

They believed that I didn’t need the same dose of methadone as I wasn’t now using illicit or unprescribed drugs, ignoring the fact that it was because of this dose of methadone that I was able to abstain from other drugs and alcohol. Their logic seemed to be...
10th September 2023

Stopping Heroin Use Without Treatment

Many of Biernacki’s interviewees revealed that when they resolved to stop using heroin, they were uncertain about what they should do with their lives instead. They knew what they did not want to do, but they were less certain about what they did want and how they could go...

About us


Testimonials


  • David’s work across many decades has laid the groundwork for words and practices that today trip off the tongue, such as ‘recovery movement’ and ‘cultural trauma’. The Recovery Voices website brings his insights from the field into one home. It also invites us to the meal table within that house. He and his collaborator Wulf Livingston rightly reserve a special seat for the people and communities whose stories we must hear into full expression to move towards genuine reconciliation. Thank you, David, for your continued groundbreaking work and the wholehearted way you convene us into the heartland of an alternative future. Cormac Russell, Author of Rekindling Democracy and Co-author of The Connected Community.

  • I’m glad that this new website has been launched—it’ll help people share their experience of what it means to be human and help remind them of the simplicity of the recovery journey to wholeness. Congratulations to my friends David, Wulf, and colleagues—their dedication to helping others navigate their humanness is something I’ve long admired. Wynford Ellis Owen, Former CEO at Living Room Cardiff, Wales
  • Congratulations on the new website! Bill White (Addiction Recovery Advocate, Historian and Researcher)
  • The new resource Recovery Voices digs into the lives and experiences of people who, in recovery themselves, spend time with others seeking, or in, recovery from addictions. In identifying themes, it draws out the rich diversity of experiences, showing how there is no single 'grand narrative' of recovery, no single 'recipe', just lots of people living out their own authentic lives in ways that they greatly prefer. The site represents a tonne of voluntary work from David Clark in Australia and Wulf Livingston in Wales. Their collaboration in itself shows how recovery seeds in, and spreads from, the spaces between people in relationships. Professor Wendy Dossett, University of Chester, England
  • I’ve been learning from David’s websites for over 20 years now, and his new Recovery Voices initiative with Wulf Livingston has added a new dimension to my experiences. I love the films and through them I am ‘meeting’ new people, discovering exciting recovery community initiatives, and learning even more about recovery and related matters. It’s a little university… and it’s only just begun! Michael Scott, Australia (45 years in recovery from alcohol addiction, 40 years as a drug and alcohol treatment practitioner)