Last Wednesday, I spent a wonderful evening in Southgate on Gower (South Wales) with two very special friends who worked in the addiction recovery field for many years, Becky Hancock and Angie Evason.
Becky was a Swansea University Psychology student with me back in 1999. The following year I won the tender to evaluate over a two-year period all projects supported by the Welsh Drug and Alcohol Treatment Fund (DATF), and I hired Becky as my full-time research assistant. She went on to become an Arrest Referral Worker at our local treatment agency, West Glamorgan Council of Alcohol and Drug Abuse (WGCADA). She rose through the ranks to later become Deputy CEO of what was later known as Welsh Centre for Action on Dependency and Addiction (WCADA) and remained in that position until WCADA was merged into Adferaid Recovery. She left the organisation in August 2021 and is now working as a Substance Misuse and Mental Health Policy Officer with the South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner’s team.
When I interacted with people at WGCADA, Angie Evason worked with Esther Mead in reception. These special women played a critical role in the initial connection of people seeking help from the treatment agency. Knowing how much courage it had taken for some people with a substance use problem to approach the agency, Esther and Angie knew the importance of giving them a warm welcome, and ensuring they felt wanted and cared for from day one. They had to instil hope, and reassurance to clients that they had made the right decision in coming to WGCADA.
Angie and Esther spent a lot of time with clients (in-house and on the phone), giving them the chance to offload and share before, during, and after treatment. They were very much part of the therapeutic process operating in WGCADA. Angie later became a Team Leader at WGCADA, managing a number of workers who were delivering various aspects of the organisation’s treatment services. She left what had become Adferaid Recovery in late 2023, and now works for a homeless charity in Swansea.
It was so good to see Angie and Becky. We reminisced about old friends such as Keith Morgan, Dave Watkins, Lawrence Mylan (RIP), Fred Touhy (RIP), Esther Mead, and WGCADA’s CEO at the time, Norman Preddy. I learnt so much about addiction and recovery whilst interacting with the WGCADA team and the people who accessed the service for help in overcoming their problems.
I haven’t laughed as much as I did with Angie and Becky for quite some time, particularly whilst we were taking and then discarding photos that ‘weren’t good enough’. It was so good to hear that my two special friends were happy (and not stressed) in their new jobs, but it was sad to hear of the changes that had occurred at my ‘old training ground’ that led to them leaving the organisation. I updated them with the latest news about my children, all of whom they knew. And Becky and Angie kindly bought my dinner without me knowing what they were doing. Thank you!
Whilst on Gower, I also caught up with my old best schoolmate in Melton Mowbray, Jeff Zorko, along with this wife Marian and daughter Rosie. I also met Rosie’s new daughter Matilda. Jeff and I spent a number of years working in jobs in different places around the world, only to find we both ended up living on Gower. He has known my three youngest children since each of them were born. Jeff became an invaluable Trustee on our charity Wired International Ltd, which funded Wired In activities. I am very grateful for the charity work he did then and the long-lasting friendship I have had with him and his family.