Blog

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...

In this inspirational book, a series of personal stories are interwoven into chapters focusing on how the exciting initiative North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC), which is based in Bangor, is helping people recover from serious substance use problems and related issues.

Tasty canapés were provided prior to my first talk, which was focused on addiction recovery and 'My Journey From Brain Chemicals to Human Connection', to an audience of around 30 people. We then had a gorgeous dinner...

Us residents were surrounded by people in recovery who had what we wanted and from whom we could learn so many different things. One could cherry pick what one wanted to know and use, and without even knowing it...

I joined and was soon inspired to write a play, which members really liked. I ended up directing the 40-minute play, which was about how drug and alcohol misuse can destroy people’s lives. I was offered a job with TAPE...

What was my rock bottom? It was every morning! I would lie there when I came around in ‘bed’, wherever that might be, on a mate’s sofa or in a car park, and experience a heart-sinking feeling, an overwhelming...

I hadn't felt like this before; it felt like a bad dose of flu. A friend came around and I had a line of heroin from him. All of a sudden I felt fine. My heart just sank as the penny dropped. ‘Oh my god, I'm addicted!’ I carried on using...

'She had done exactly what I was doing, and she had gotten through it. It was a Light Bulb Moment. From that moment on, I didn’t feel so alone. For the first time, I was with a group of people who understood me and my addiction, and I understood and related to them...’

Rob emphasises that he was the sort of person who would say, ‘Sod that, I’m off!’, if he was asked to do something he didn’t like. But now he loves it when they try to push each other into trying new things. And if there...

In the third year of my psychology degree at university in the mid-1970s, I did not know whether I wanted to go on to study clinical psychology, or conduct research in laboratory rats focused on gaining insights into how our brain functions, in order to help people overcome...

During her early days at Penrhyn House, Lianne was so negative towards herself. She'd never been around a group of people who cared about her and wanted her to get well. The people at Penrhyn loved her when she...