We earlier posted a Film Teaser for James Deakin, Founder of North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC), based on his interview with Wulf. I was excited when it was my time to interview James, as part of a follow-up series to Wulf’s interview. I edited eight films from that Zoom interview, summaries and links of which you can find here.
I decided to show this particular clip first, in which James describes how he was incredibly intimidated by academics initially. However, he later learnt that there was no need to be intimidated—he could play an important role in the addiction recovery field. And so he has! He is now also working closely with two academics on the present project, well a former academic in my case. He’s previously been working with other academics.
There’s A Place For Me [5’48”]
James points out that he used to be incredibly intimidated by academics at one point. He felt out of place mixing with academics at recovery-related events, but later realised that he had something to contribute. He heard academics talking about recovery-related matters in a theoretical way, but he could see how to apply these theories in the real world and make positive things happen.
James still struggles with precisely how recovering people go from being a negative influence in society to being a recovery carrier. They have disproportionate effects on their social circle, but it goes from a negative to a positive impact as the person recovers from addiction. What sort of psychological process takes place for this transformation to occur? James knows how to facilitate such changes in people, but not what underlies them psychologically. However, knowing that he was able to help people change made him realise that ‘there is a place for me at this table.’
James goes on to talk about how he identified with, and was inspired by, Mark Gilman—‘he had them all eating out of his hand’ during his presentation. Seeing Mark at this presentation made him realise that, ’I can contribute something meaningful.’ This was really important to James—he needed to know that he could make things happen, rather than just be a ‘passenger’ in the field. 19 June 2023.