Blog

I was terrified when I moved into Penryhn House. I had such low self-esteem and all my insecurities surfaced. I arrived with all my possessions in one holdall bag, which I didn’t unpack for two weeks. I was still unsure whether this recovery thing was what I wanted. However, I slowly convinced myself that I should try and if it didn’t work...

I invited Mark to create a piece of Forum Theatre for the students attending my Clinical Masters course on addiction that focused on the dilemmas faced by people recovering from heroin addiction. The class was a huge success, and Mark was really touched by the positive reception and feedback he received from the students.

David was invited to an inspirational 12-Step graduation ceremony at HM Prison Lancaster Farms, where he witnessed a level of emotional intensity and gratitude, along with a collective feeling of empowerment and belonging, that he had never seen whilst working at the so-called centre for excellence, the National Addiction...

‘Even when you’re in pain. Even when you are really hurting. Even when you are feeling really broken, you can actually get through these challenges. But not on your own, as a team. As a community, we do it together. That’s how we get well. Stuff like this is just priceless, and it’s kind of spreading the message that recovery is a really...

But the key to change, honestly, is that you have a healing environment that’s filled with people who see you. Who make you feel that you belong. Because what they then allow you to do, is that when you are in need of a regulatory interaction where somebody just is present, you can do that. When you're in need of somebody who is...

David describes two important aims for recovery communities or groups: Can the connectedness of recovery communities inspire similar changes more broadly across the wider community? Can they be the glue or the inspiration for re-engaging a range of excluded and marginalised groups and individuals?

The idea in conducting this expedition in was two-fold. Firstly, to give the Penryhn residents an occasion where they would go way beyond anything they thought they could achieve. Where they would experience, and overcome, extreme hardship. Secondly, to challenge...

'... I am leaning into my vulnerabilities as part of my healing. It takes courage to be vulnerable, and there is strength in that. If sharing this encourages even one person to embrace their challenges within this neurotypical system, to be kind to themselves, or to...'

David describes two important aims for recovery communities or groups: Can the connectedness of recovery communities inspire similar changes more broadly across the wider community? Can they be the glue or the inspiration for re-engaging a range of excluded and marginalised groups and individuals?

Granfield and Cloud described other assets that a person possesses or that exist within their immediate environment that can function to promote and sustain recovery from drug- and alcohol-related problems. These assets are described as various forms of recovery capital, defined as: ‘…. the breadth and depth of internal and...

There is a resonance through our conversation and David’s work that what recovery does at its heart is to transform. It does this through contagion, i.e. it spreads from one person to another, from one community to another. Importantly, the transformation is not only for those recovering from difficult experiences of alcohol...

It highlights and clarifies the links between wider social factors such as poverty, discrimination and inequality, along with traumas such as abuse and violence, and the resulting emotional distress or troubled behaviour, whether it is confusion, fear, despair or troubled or troubling behaviour. It also shows why those of us who...

When you share your story, and listen to other people’s stories, you realise that they have part of your story in theirs, and vice versa. This helps you identify with, and connect to, these other people. We kind of earn our seats at ‘the table’ with the pain and suffering we’ve been through. We connect in meetings through our suffering.

As some of you know, I had such a special time when I visited ARC Fitness last May. I fell in love with the city and the people there. As for ARC Fitness... Wow! Just an amazing recovery initiative.  And I was humbled by both the reception and kindness I received. Here are links to my two blog posts about my trip, along with a short film...

Happy people tended to be located in the centre of their local social networks and in large clusters of happy people. The happiness of an individual was associated with the happiness of people up to three degrees removed in the social network (e.g. to the friends of their friends’ friends). People who were surrounded by...