19th September 2023
If two close family members (a conservative estimate) were affected, this meant that there were at least 4.2 million people in the UK alone living with the negative consequences of someone else’s drug and/or alcohol problem.
19th September 2023
‘The primary goal of an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) process is to enhance collective citizen visioning and production. This paper discusses each of four essential elements in detail in an effort to...
19th September 2023
'The Transformation will help you discover hidden resources of physical and mental energy and hope, as well as your capacity to imagine and make use of perspectives and solutions that may have previously been unthinkable. You may also discover the treasure of...'
18th September 2023
'Sadly, that focus has caused huge harm to millions of people around the world, especially poor people and especially communities. And it has created four harms, unintended as they may be in particular.'
18th September 2023
As I got further involved in the world of drugs, the part of me that would say, ‘This is wrong’ was being squashed. In that environment, with everyone around you using, the drugs take over your whole life and you take more and more risks. I hated what I was, and years went by before...
18th September 2023
It’s hard to believe that it is ten years since my good friend Michael Liu and I went out with Professor Marion Kickett to her home country in York to film her describing her life, country, culture, spirituality, family, education and resilience. Marion is a Noongar leader from the Balardong language group and is the former Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University in Perth. From our filming of Marion, Michael and I...
18th September 2023
Wulf Livingston talks about his early hedonistic drug and alcohol use, life as a successful chef, and qualification as a social worker. He then worked with the drug and alcohol charity Lifeline in England, CAIS and later the Probation Service in North Wales. Wulf later joined academia, eventually becoming Professor of Alcohol...
18th September 2023
Wendy Dossett has been researching the 12-Step Fellowship for a number of years. She points out that those groups that use the 12-step approach start with the concept of powerlessness, and argue that if the experience of the substance use or the behaviour is beyond a person’s willpower, then there has to be some...
18th September 2023
'Recovery Rising 'is the professional memoirs of William White who, over the span of five decades, evolved through several diverse roles to emerge as the addiction fields preeminent historian and one of its most visionary voices and prolific writers. Recovery Rising contains the...
18th September 2023
Wendy describes powerlessness as being a central concept in 12-Step fellowships such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). It is argued that if control of substance use is beyond your own willpower, then there has to be some other power that is going to bring about...
18th September 2023
Some people may not want to, or feel unable to, give up using drugs completely. They might just want to reduce the harm that drugs can cause, e.g. they might change from injecting heroin to smoking it. Harm reduction, or harm minimisation, is a model of working that has been associated with drug use treatment since the mid-1980s.
18th September 2023
'... recovery from trauma and neglect is also all about relationships—rebuilding trust, regaining confidence, returning to a sense of security and reconnecting to love… healing and recovery are impossible—even with the best medications and therapy in the world—without lasting...'
17th September 2023
Mental health is not a product of pharmacology or a service that can be singularly provided by an institution: it is a condition that is more determined by our community assets than our medication or access to professional interventions more generally. There are functions that only people living in families and communities can perform to promote mental health and wellbeing... there simply is no substitute for genuine citizen-led...
17th September 2023
‘A fundamental and permeating strength of humankind is the capacity to form and maintain relationships—the capacity to belong. It is in the context of our clan, community and culture that we are born and raised. The brain-mediated set of complex capacities that allow one human to connect to another form the very basis for survival and has led to the ‘success’ of our species...'
17th September 2023
'Healing as an experience of safety: ‘The healing of trauma requires the establishment of an environment of safety, without judgement or prejudice… Cultural safety is the identification a person makes with factors that are derived from the culture, belief systems or world views that allow them to feel safe while being with those to whom they have gone to help.’