Wulf Livingston

The alcohol and drug landscape continues to remain dominated by policy and practice seeking to ‘treat’ people. Despite the oft heard phrase - ‘it is easy to get off and much harder to stay off’ - we still have a world where...

Recently, I had the privilege of attending and presenting at the Scottish Recovery Consortium (SRC) in Perth. Four hundred folk gathering, chatting, networking, discussing, and of course hugging. What is there not to like? There was a real buzz in the air and a palpable sense of lots...

There is a resonance through our conversation and David’s work that what recovery does at its heart is to transform. It does this through contagion, i.e. it spreads from one person to another, from one community to another. Importantly, the transformation is not only for those recovering from difficult experiences of alcohol...

I have my own new year's resolutions in this context. They are simple. They come from my internal motivation and require me to be with, and work with, others. They are quite simply (i) to support recovery communities and those within, when and wherever I can, and (ii) keep banging on about the value of such. 

I had been asked by Gary Rutherford, Founder of ARC Fitness, to share some of the understanding I have formed over the last 20 years about what are Recovery Organisations, why they work, and what enables them to flourish. [Post includes a pdf of presentation slides.]

I saw everything that day, that reinforced my previous understanding of ARC Fitness as one of the great examples of what is a Recovery Community. How they are a unique blend of their people, place and passions. The sense of ARC Fitness not only as a community...

It felt highly excluding. It was London, medical problem, and deficit-based eccentric exploration, with a tokenism towards Wales and then Cardiff tokenism towards the north, and a non-existent tokenism towards the Lived Experience Voice. I can only imagine the same story happens in numerous other parts of the alcohol and...

In this interview with Gary, we capture so much about what has inspired us to do this series. We have a recovery leader, a champion, who has taken his own personal recovery journey and understanding, and transformed it into a vibrant and thriving recovery community.

Our latest release is an Interview with Tim Leighton, in which the abundance of value and values comes across very strongly. In this conversation, we have managed to catch from Tim a beautiful integration of community, educational, personal, political, professional, research and theoretical understandings about recovery.

The visibility of recovery; the active sight of those in recovery being in, and giving back to, the wider community; the demonstration of what is possible; and even the possibility of successful change are all pivotal to individual and collective recovery. The direct challenge...

Rhoda Emlyn-Jones and I have known each other for over twenty years, during which time I have come to value her font of knowledge. It is therefore a real pleasure to have some of Rhoda's thoughts on what makes a difference in enabling families to recover.

Like many recovery groups and activities, DARE required the coming together of a group of motivated individuals. In this instance, it began with the desire of some in recovery to do the massive Welsh 15 peaks challenge, and their connection to three ‘friends of recovery’ with a depth of mountaineering experience and skills who wanted to...

Like a stained glass window, with its different elements that make the total picture, John was known to all of us through many different contexts. Yet, he had a life richer and fuller than the parts we each knew. He was known to us, this diverse and disparate community, by a variety of names; JC, John Dogs, John Quack, John Vietnam and...

On Friday 29th September, North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC) held their first full service of remembrance and hope. We gathered in Saint Deiniol’s Cathedral, Bangor, and expressed gratitude for being alive and kicking; and regret and sorrow for those...