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We are fundamentally social creatures—our brains are wired to foster working and playing together. Trauma devastates the social-engagement system and interferes with cooperation, nurturing, and the ability to function as a productive member of the clan... Yet institutions that deal with traumatized children and adults all too often...

Researchers are beginning to suggest that reaching the tipping point of addiction recovery may have as much to do with community factors as intrapersonal factors. Recovery advocates and clinicians are calling for creation of a "healing forest"-- "naturally occurring, healing environments that provide some of the corrective...

He was a GP like me and he had drunk in a similar way to me and he had the same kind of consequences as me and he felt the same as me. He was a few years into his recovery and I identified and connected with him to the degree that I suddenly thought, “Oh my God, if he can do it, maybe I can do it.” I probably must have felt...

We know from an examination of our history that people typically recover in the context of community. It flourishes in environments where individuals feel a sense of belonging and purpose. In spaces of mattering. Places where people can share their gifts of recovery, what they have learned through transformation and earned...

Climbing is made up of a series of stages, moving from one foothold or one grip to another. One small movement followed by another… and then another. Concentration and focus are needed. In this regard, there is a close analogy with the recovery process.

Gary went to a running club and did the miles by himself. He loved that because ‘that was me in my head’. However, whenever he did strength training and CrossFit, it was community-focused. You did it in a group and everybody was in it together. In the ARC group sessions, when everybody does the same thing at the same time...

'And if you're ever looking for inspiration or a realisation of how well life is, all you've got to do is look at some of these guys and look at where they’re up to, what they’re going through, and what they’ve been dealing with. And nine times out of ten, they're doing it with a smile on their face as well.’

The first part of the film, Totally Addicted, involves three inmates talking about the effects of Spice, how it is very addictive, and the serious adverse reactions that people experience with the drug, e.g. intense anxiety, paranoia, dissociation. The drug is obviously getting into HMP Berwyn and impacting badly on some of the inmates.

It turned out they would be, for what turned out to be the seven of the loneliest years of my life. During this time, I didn’t touch one drop of alcohol. Yet it still had me by throat, strangling every waking day. I was in a continual...

I'm back to posting on my Recovery Voices blog after nearly three weeks away. Mind you, I haven't been away anywhere or even resting full-time at home. Just been busy finishing one of the books I'm writing, as well as helping out on a new initiative that has been developing in North Wales.

The first line of response should be support imbedded within relationships that are natural, reciprocal (non-hierarchical), non-professionalized, non-commercialized, and potentially enduring. Such relationships are to be found, not within a treatment center, but within the...

Bruce has contributed significantly to our understanding of trauma, resilience and healing, as well as disconnection and its adverse consequences. He emphasises the need to regulate the brain's stress response system to facilitate connection; the Regulate-Relate-Reason heuristic is...

The alternative path to community development, Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), focuses on a community’s assets, capacities, and abilities. Significant community development takes places only when local community people are committed to investing in...

On May 1 this year I started a daily Recovery Voices blog series, Transforming Pain Into Power, to celebrate the 10-Year Anniversary of North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC). This resulted in a total of 38 blog posts which comprised stories and other forms of content.

NWRC—and Penrhyn House in particular—gave me a safe, structured environment to begin an understanding the illness from which I was suffering. With the support of the team and the 12-Step Fellowship, I worked the Steps, and something inside me began to shift.