Wulf and I would like to take this opportunity of wishing all our readers a very Merry Christmas. And thank you all for accessing our website through the past year. We would also like to thank all our Recovery Voices for participating in our initiative.
I’ll be busy just after Christmas editing films and writing summaries for Wulf’s latest interviewee. I won’t give away the name of that person at this time, but I will say that they have been a major force in the addiction recovery field for over 25 years.
I would also like to take this opportunity of thanking all those people who I have interviewed (sometimes multiple times) for a book I’m writing. Thanks to Alex, Gary, James, Jill, Lee, Lucke, Marc, Marcus, Saffron and Sophie (Wulf did her initial interview). It’s going to be a busy month of interviewing and writing for me in January. And thanks to Wulf. It’s been a great pleasure working with you on this Recovery Voices project.
Some of the most amazing people I have met over the past 25 years are in recovery from addiction. Some of them, I am proud to say, are amongst my best friends. They are inspirational, empathic, kind, thoughtful, smart and resilient. It has been, and continues to be, a great honour and pleasure to be working in this field.
I want to end this post, the last of the year, with two powerful quotes from Phil Harris that I have posted earlier in the year:
‘… if we are to support those that experience problems we need to understand them as people first and foremost: what drives the inner experience of use of drugs and alcohol, what drives change and how people not only identify a different kind of of life, but also how they sustain it in light of obstacles and setbacks.
This is not just about the individual, but also the relationships and the environments that provide the contexts and reference points of their lives.’ Empathy for the Devil: How to help people overcome drugs and alcohol problems, p. 8. [My bold]
‘Change does not merely imply stopping use, but redefining one’s entire life. It is not just about escaping addiction, but escaping the context that makes addiction meaningful, and catching up with the demands of an institutional life that they may have little or no experience of. We would not expect a 14 year-old to competently meet demands of a 35 year-old. They have neither the skills, the experience or cognitive capacity to do so. But we expect it of the newly drug free individual. And when they fail, we call it the disease.‘ Drug Induced: Addiction and treatment in perspective, pp. 55-56.
Photos are from my visits to North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC) and being on a walk with Sober Snowdonia (top), ARC Fitness, and BAC O’Connor (in Langan’s Tea Rooms).
