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Please check out three posts I have added to the Stories section of our website for one of our later Recovery Voices, Tim Leighton, a person who has greatly inspired me over the years. A few years into his personal recovery from addiction, Tim started work at Clouds House (a residential treatment centre) as a counsellor in 1985...

When we eliminate power asymmetries between professionals and service users – accepting that the patient and their family have lived expertise, offer meaningful choice (not only which medication to use), accept that the client’s goals may be different from...

The first film clip below involve rehab, busking, writing a play, and touring as a director of the play. But then Marcus was back to drugs and the streets… and HMP. He describes this prison visit, which involved running the prison radio and doing some filming, as saving his life. 

'... if we are to support those that experience problems we need to understand them as people first and foremost: what drives the inner experience of use of drugs and alcohol, what drives change and how people not only identify a different kind of of life, but also how...

The most dramatic illustration of the role of ‘social context’ centres around heroin addiction and the widespread use by American soldiers of heroin and opium during the Vietnam War. It involved one of the most ambitious and interesting research studies ever undertaken on use of psychoactive drugs.

At a very early stage, James and colleagues realised that they needed to ‘cover all the bases’ in relation to mutual aid. People were given a variety of options. If the person couldn’t relate to the 12-Step approach, they could try SMART Recovery, and if that didn’t work they could try...

'And I've come to understand, and this is probably one of the key learnings for me over a very long time, I've come to understand the idea of commissioning recovery is an oxymoron. And for anyone who's not quite sure what the word oxymoron means, it's when you stick two words...'

Please check out this magical video from ARC Fitness that shows Gary Rutherford, Founder of this amazing recovery community, introducing a celebration of those people in the conference hall  who are in recovery from addiction. All taking place to the wonderful Coldplay song A Sky Full of Stars. For me, tears welled up as people received...

I make reference to Lewis Mehl-Madrona, the Native American psychiatrist who wrote the fascinating book Healing the Mind Through the Power of Story: The Promise of Narrative Psychiatry. I read Lewis’s words: ‘Stories help us develop empathy…. Stories give cognitive and emotional significance to experience.'

Wulf learnt that the stuff that really makes a difference to people’s lives is what occurs beyond that treatment phase. The importance of peer and shared-lived experience was cemented for him during this time. An interaction with a medically-oriented practitioner, although often of value, is not a life-changing...

Recovery In Focus is a therapeutic photography project working with people in early recovery from addiction to drink and drugs. Looking through the lens of a camera gives a new and creative way to tell stories of addiction and recovery.  Participants are all in early recovery... 

Recovery Voices was officially launched on 30 September 2023. We had spent six months preparatory work, including interviewing a number of people in recovery, before the launch. Here, you can check out the ten most viewed blog posts since the website was launched.

It is not often that someone in our field is asked by government to have one’s research form the basis of a national model and/or programme. This is what happened to Rhoda Emlyn-Jones OBE when the Welsh government set about trying to integrate all...

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.]

'Most clients entering a treatment environment / relationship do so with fear and ambivalence. The fear is the fear of an alien environment, the feeling of vulnerability and lack of control, and the suspicion that they are in a place where they will not be understood or accepted. The ambivalence embraces both the passionate desire to continue the drug relationship and the whimsical and desperate hope that something...