It’s hard to believe that I first interviewed Huseyin Djemil for Recovery Voices just over a year ago. Time has just flown! Huseyin is Founder of Towards Recovery, a recovery community based in Henley-on-Thames. He ran his own consultancy for a number of years and is now Head of New Hope Drug and Alcohol Service in Bracknell. I first met Huseyin in London back in 2006/7.
I love this film of Huseyin talking about the Japanese art of Kintsugi and its relevance to addiction recovery.
Disclosure & Kintsugi [6’13”]
Huseyin argues that we buy into stigma by encouraging recovering people leaving a residential rehab come up with a cover story, rather than teaching them to disclose in an appropriate way. In a way, they are being taught to start their recovery with a form of lie.
Huseyin describes the Japanese art of Kintsugi that involves putting broken pieces of pottery back together again with gold dust. He shows a broken plate he keeps (fixed with brass rather than gold!) and describes how Kintsugi teaches you that your broken parts are valued—you embrace your cracks! He and his colleagues had a Kintsugi group session, which they all found very helpful, using Amazon Kintsugi kits.