It’s been an exciting month on Recovery Voices, with various content relating to two very interesting Wulf interviews being posted. Wulf’s first interview was with Tim Leighton, formerly of Clouds House and Action on Addiction, an old friend of both of us and someone who we’ve always held in the highest regard. The second interview was with Gary Rutherford of ARC Fitness in Northern Ireland, someone neither of us have met. As Wulf said, the latter interview was a ‘banger’.
Gary and Tim took six of the spots in our ten most viewed posts for the month. My blog posts about the first 22 chapters of My Journey: From Brain Chemicals to Human Connection, and my Zoom ‘visit’ to a meeting at North Wales Recovery Communities featuring Marcus Fair talking about his Recovery Story, took two of the other places. The third other post related to the conversation between Rhoda-Emlyn Jones and Wulf.
And top of the list was my blog post about my favourite columnist of The Guardian newspaper, John Crace, who wrote about his 37th anniversary of his recovery journey from heroin addiction.
1. 37th Anniversary: John Crace
‘Barring any last minute relapses, tomorrow will be the 37th anniversary of my getting clean. No drugs, no alcohol. I call that a result. I had no idea what I was doing really when the 30-year-old me walked through the entrance of the rehab centre on the morning of 9 March 1987.’
2. Theme Clip Playlist: Gary Rutherford
‘So, if you willingly engage in something that’s difficult and you do it enough times and you do it regularly, then you become resilient…. And that translates to recovery, because for me, recovery is just resilience in motion. That’s literally what it is. It’s every day, it’s getting stronger and stronger and stronger.’
3. My Journey: From Brain Chemicals to Human Connection
Now, in my 70th year, I have become even more conscious of what leading US recovery advocate Bill White says in his book Recovery Rising about leaving a personal legacy for the field, so that others, and the field as a whole, can benefit from one’s personal knowledge, understanding, and experiences.
4. Introducing Gary Rutherford of ARC Fitness
In this interview with Gary, we capture so much about what has inspired us to do this series. We have a recovery leader, a champion, who has taken his own personal recovery journey and understanding, and transformed it into a vibrant and thriving recovery community.
5. Gary Rutherford (People page)
There is an infectious enthusiasm that runs through the interview. It is combined with a real sense of passion and drive. We hear of Gary’s own formative experiences and use. His move out of addiction and into nursing, and from this the recognition of a void in support for others.
6. My Conversation With Tim Leighton
Our latest release is an Interview with Tim Leighton, in which the abundance of value and values comes across very strongly. In this conversation, we have managed to catch from Tim a beautiful integration of community, educational, personal, political, professional, research and theoretical understandings about recovery.
7. Helping Families Create Sustained Change: Rhoda Emlyn-Jones
In response to Wulf’s question, Rhoda replies: ‘One of the big things that makes such a big difference is having an approach that is inclusive. That includes the person, the network, the family.’ She points out that our personal wellbeing is tied up with our sense of belonging, with who is around us, and being loved and loving others.
8. Theme Clip Playlist: Tim Leighton
In 2006, Bill White pointed out that there was a paradigm shift occurring in the addiction world, from a pathology and intervention paradigm to a recovery management paradigm, where the role of professionals is to introduce people to recovery and connect them to recovery resources which can help them create a meaningful life for themselves.
9. Tim Leighton: My Reflections & His Story
On 18 March 2009, Tim and I both spoke at a conference in London organised by Action on Addiction and my grassroots initiative Wired In, with the main speaker being Bill White. Addiction recovery advocates from around the UK were invited to the conference, which was a great success.
10. Zooming in on Marcus Fair and NWRC Members
I spent an interesting early evening last Friday here in Perth, Western Australia, when I joined members of North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC) at their Community Meeting & Breakfast (I didn’t get any) at Penrhyn House in Bangor… via Zoom. I was able to see and hear guest speaker Marcus Fair, Founder of Eternal Media, tell his Recovery Story, and then heard discussion about coming events and other news at NWRC.
PS. There is no April Fool’s joke in this post.