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More Than Treatment, Living Life (Again) - My Derry Talk: 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.]

Recovery Activities in North Wales: Wulf says there are about 20-30 like-minded people spread across North Wales, many of whom have been around a long time. They all know each other, have been on the same journey, and share the same values and principles. Everyone knows how to get 60-70 service users into...

Favourite Blog Posts: Wendy Dossett 12-Step Fellowship, Part 1: In Wendy’s research, only 25% of her Fellowship participants described themselves as religious. Many people who stick around in the Fellowships interpret Higher Power in secular ways. She points out that lots of ideas found in SMART Recovery, which presents itself...

Recovery, Connection and Hope: After seeing an advert in the British Medical Journal, David phoned the Sick Doctors Trust Helpline. He talked to a doctor in recovery who told his personal story. ‘His story connected with me in a way the tablets hadn’t.’ David had found hope. He also heard for the first time the idea of recovery as an...

Giving Back, Part 1: One of the themes behind developing Bwyd Da Bangor (Good Food Bangor), the NWRC cafe/restaurant on the High Street, ‘was to try and be of service to other marginalised communities within the wider community.’ NWRC grows food, through their Growing for Change initiative, which it supplies to...

Taxi Ride to the Station: ‘If recovery is a journey from London to Manchester, then treatment is the taxi ride to the station.’ Huseyin argues that the taxi-ride to the station has become a proxy for the journey. Taxi drivers convince you to get into their taxi so you can get to the station (treatment), but when you get there you don’t...

The first of two articles I wrote over a decade ago, based on heroin users’ own accounts of their experiences. These accounts help us understand why and how people start using heroin, and continue to use until they realise they have become addicted to the drug.

Wulf emphasises that it is very important for the long-term success of NWRC, that despite people identifying it as something James Deakin was doing, from James’s point of view other people were helping him move things forward. The ongoing development of NWRC wasn’t...

James Deakin is totally inspired by attending the Recovery Academy in Glasgow in 2010. He listens to David Best talking about addiction recovery, and Mark Gilman describing Asset-Based Community Development approach (ABCD). The latter approach is a primary foundation of the North Wales Recovery Communities...

Huseyin Djemil says, in relation to something written in Andy Partington’s book Hope in Addiction: ‘The real deal in recovery is being bitten by the spider, is having that internal transformation somehow, that makes you look at everything differently. And it changes you.’ Can you guess who provides the tools, metaphorically speaking?

Huseyin talks about trauma and its impact, and how people with substance use problems, many of whom have experienced trauma in their past, are demonised in society. Earlier in his life, he realised that there wasn't anything inherently wrong with him.

‘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...'

David describes that as his drinking problem was becoming worse he developed the ability to split what he was drinking from what his patients with alcohol problems were drinking. The amounts were not that different. However, David rationalised that he couldn't have a problem, as he was in a suit and seeing patients.

It was about the heart-sinking feeling, the overwhelming despair that occurred when he was coming around in the morning, even before opening his eyes. ‘Oh shit, I’ve got to do everything that I did yesterday again today, and that’s the horrible thing about addiction.'

Marcus Fair describes the Chief Constable of North Wales, Simon Shaw, as a champion of the recovery cause. He believed that people could change with the right help. Simon was a humanitarian, but he also knew that a lot of police money could be saved by helping people who had an addiction to drugs and/or alcohol, and were...