Blog

The first essential factor for a person to be able to recover is hope. This hope is based on a sense that life can hold more for one than it currently does, and it inspires a desire and motivation to improve one’s lot in life and pursue recovery. Hope is the catalyst of the...

Photographs become so much more than pictures once you’ve been on Recovery in Focus! Our location shoots took us to Liverpool, Colwyn Bay, Parys Mountain, Llandudno and Lligwy. And the workshops taught photography skills, support in building robust recovery toolkits, alongside learning how to use photography...

... Wulf told me about his chef days. My clearest memory about those conversations was Wulf telling me how much drinking and drugging went on amongst chefs. It was an occupation to escape or avoid! He also told me about his actions described in the film below, his helping young people. Seeds of what was to come in his later life...

Please tell your friends about our website and ask them to do the same. It’s very important that as many people as possible get to hear about the amazing recovery communities that exist in the UK (and further afield).... And please remember, the voices of recovering people are inspirational and have much to teach us. 

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...

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...

‘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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...