The idea of a Blog page is that we will regularly be posting a wide variety of different content. The page will not only contain posts related to our Recovery Voices interviews, but also include key information about addiction, recovery and treatment, latest happenings within the recovery communities with which we are collaborating, and relevant news and information from the wider world. We also hope to have contributions from guest bloggers from time-to-time.
27th June 2024
I've therefore decided to take a period away from our Recovery Voices project, so that I can focus more on the recovery book I want to write and spend more time 'being'. This post will be my last until the beginning of August. This focus on book writing and 'being' time is all the more important in that I have a significant...
26th June 2024
Marcus and his team receive commissions to make films for health boards, the police and prisons. They take out people in recovery as crew members for this work, helping them to gain valuable experience. People in recovery also participate in Recovery in Focus courses...
25th June 2024
‘But the other skills they are getting are all being fed in under the radar, the confidence, the self-esteem. The sense of worthlessness is going. You know, that self-loathing that us addicts have had in addiction. It’s overwhelming that self-loathing. And that kind of goes and people don’t even know. All they know is that...
24th June 2024
I am so impressed by what has been achieved by Eternal Media, both in terms of helping large numbers of people in their recovery journey from addiction and/or offending behaviour, and by the high quality of the film projects that the team has made. And the fact that Marcus has survived the constant challenge of finding funding...
20th June 2024
Wendy Dossett points out that at mutual aid group meetings, no-one is better than anyone else. ‘Everyone has done the same shit.’ At the end of the clip, she says, ‘But for navigating a path to recovery from addiction, the central kind of emotional journey that that is, you’re so much better off with somebody who’s trod that path...
19th June 2024
The Connected Community is about places, and about the combined efforts of the people who make them vibrant and made vibrant by them. It is about neighbours taking responsibility for their local communities so that they and those they love can have a decent life, and so that future generations can expect to do the same.
18th June 2024
David emphasises that recovery comes from the person. Recovery is self-healing. Practitioners don’t fix people; they catalyse and support the natural resources of the person. Too many practitioners think they are the one to have done the work. David refers back to his Wired In days, particularly the time when he and his colleagues...
17th June 2024
Resource was quickly outstripped by demand at LEAP. Research showed that outcomes were very good—people were finding recovery and their lives were improving. Residents were being connected to people with lived experience, and to supportive communities of...
13th June 2024
To move forward, people need to have a sense of their own capability and their own power. Their hope needs to be focused on things they can do for themselves rather than on new cures or fixes that someone else will discover or give them. To be empowered, they need...
12th June 2024
Tim emphasises that Phil Valentine’s statement ‘You are in recovery if you say you are’ seems to him profound. The statement has been criticised by many people—can someone who is absolutely pissed out of their head and shooting up smack say ‘I’m in recovery’? That’s surely not what Phil means, thinks Tim. Recovery is very personal...
11th June 2024
The results of that first meeting, and the effect on my life, were immense. I’m certain that there is a small element of hope—or faith or some kind of spiritual flame—that burns inside us all. I believe it’s never completely extinguished, but can become so dim that it’s almost invisible to us. It was rather like that flame was fanned...
10th June 2024
Rhoda’s view on personal responsibility is that you start with the most meaningful things for people—help them understand and articulate their own hopes for the future. Together, unpick the things that are going to help get them to a positive outcome. The personal responsibility...
6th June 2024
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...
5th June 2024
Gary had various issues when he was younger, namely a lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem, and he experienced a great deal of anxiety. He was bullied at school. He used various substances to manage these problems and his social landscape, and to feel accepted.
4th June 2024
James Deakin and Wulf agree that treatment services should focus on what they do best, which is helping people get off drugs and/or alcohol, but they should then pass their clients on to people in recovery who help them stay off. James emphasises that people who work in the medical model still don’t understand that.