Blog

I gradually expanded my shares and I found that people started to cry whilst listening. I started to realise that people genuinely understood me for the first time ever. After the meeting, people would come up to me and say that the same things had happened to them and they... 

‘...that most of the work of recovery happens in the person’s life outside of treatment relationships and settings. In addition to belonging and hope, the successes and pleasures the person needs to experience in order to gain a sense of agency are more likely to occur—and to be personally relevant and gratifying when they do occur—as part of intrinsically meaningful activities that...

So, on Saturday 25th July, seven organisations, predominantly from North Wales, will be represented on the Lakeland 50 start line by eleven individuals, largely people in recovery from addiction and many other forms of adversity. It’s a tough undertaking, make no bones...

Number 7 was the 100-mile walk in Pembrokeshire in 2023. My first experience of the whole week away with NWRC. Counselling, logistics, negotiation, catering, and foot care. Tears, tantrums, laughter, and blisters.

James submitted a funding application for the DWP’s (Department of Work and Pensions) Flexible Support Funding programme run through his local Job Centre. He set up a charity, North Wales Recovery Communities...

The impressive success of NWRC rests on the foundation of people in recovery helping others overcome their addiction. The book highlights the importance of a variety of factors in facilitating recovery, in particular the role of connection and relationships. It shows how NWRC...

I decided to rehabilitate myself and become a good father and husband, which involved stopping drinking and drugging. I did not access any treatment service. I worked as a chef for a period, rising up the ranks quickly.

I just wanted to let you know that I have just added three posts to the Stories section of the website that relate to the conversation that my colleague Wulf Livingston had with Rob Havelock and Lianne Jones in March last year.

Now, I was connecting with people and my emotions, and learning more about the latter. I felt a massive sense of achievement in giving back to others and learning about myself. The connections with these other people and the sense of belonging I experienced were very different...

Grassroots recovery community organizations and new recovery support institutions offer vehicles for long-term recovery support that bridge the clinic and the community. The clinic can bolster the will to recover and the means to recover, but it is the community that must...

The alcohol and drug landscape continues to remain dominated by policy and practice seeking to ‘treat’ people. Despite the oft heard phrase - ‘it is easy to get off and much harder to stay off’ - we still have a world where...

The person who had the biggest impact on me was Mark Gilman. ‘Mr Gilman’—he has reverential status for me—talked about Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), and this was a massive light bulb moment for me. Mark worked for Lifeline for four years as Director of...

'I found your book incredibly moving. What you've created is much more than a book about addiction and recovery. It's a testament to the power of community, the importance of being seen and valued and the extraordinary capacity people have to transform pain...'

This book highlights what can be achieved by peer-led recovery communities by focusing on North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC), based in Bangor, and founded by James Deakin in 2015. It has five primary aims: 1. To illustrate key elements that are known to...

Rob and Lianne are an exception to the commonly held view that romantic relationships don’t work for people in early recovery. Their relationship put them in a somewhat difficult situation. What did they say to other people...