About the Project

Recovery Voices, developed by David Clark and Wulf Livingston, captures conversations about what works in supporting recovery from addiction, and in the development of peer-led recovery communities, from a range of individuals with lived experience, as well as friends of recovery.

We highlight common messages and learnings that come from these conversations, providing a resource for people working with, and supporting, recovery and recovery communities.

We celebrate the lives and successes of recovering people and recovery communities, and in doing so enhance the visibility of recovery and highlight what can be achieved.

We encourage the development of new peer-led recovery communities and their interaction with other initiatives.

Blogs


13th April 2026

A Busy Time Book Writing

The main part of my writing has been a book entitled 'Transforming Pain Into Power: The Story of North Wales Recovery Communities'. The project has been quite a journey, not only involving the writing but also multiple interviews over Zoom with various people at NWRC...

People


21st September 2023

James Deakin, Part 3

James Deakin covers a range of topics relating to the functioning of North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC). These topics included NWRC trying to create as many recovery pathways as possible, involving various mutual aid groups holding meetings at NWRC's Penrhyn House; the power of 'the group' in helping individuals...
9th February 2025

Professor David Best

David Best is one of the United Kingdom’s (UK's), if not global, leading authorities on community-based recovery. Our conversation is a rich conveying of David’s involvement in various organisations and recovery initiatives, through which we have seized lots of his understanding about what is recovery and how it works...
18th September 2023

Wulf Livingston

Wulf Livingston talks about his early hedonistic drug and alcohol use, life as a successful chef, and qualification as a social worker. He then worked with the drug and alcohol charity Lifeline in England, CAIS and later the Probation Service in North Wales. Wulf later joined academia, eventually becoming Professor of Alcohol...

A RECOVERY COMMUNITY PROVIDES:

Hope
Understanding
A sense of belonging
Acceptance and support
Engagement in meaningful activities
Opportunity to give back to others

A RECOVERING PERSON:

Gains a stronger motivation to change
Possesses an enhanced self-esteem
Becomes an empowered citizen
Overcomes stigma (shame)
Finds a sense of purpose
Acquires a new identity

Communities


10th August 2023

Towards Recovery

Towards Recovery offers a Recovery Cafe in Henley-on-Thames, as well as an online Recovery Cafe, where people recovering from addiction, can get support and encouragement. It aims to help people connect with others, re-connect with themselves and the world around them, and make sustainable changes to create a life of...
10th August 2023

North Wales Recovery Communities

North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC) comprises a number of communities, including a residential rehab at Penrhyn House, Growing for Change, with its gardens and allotments, and Bwyd Da Bangor (Good Food Bangor), a community cafe/restaurant that provides the best food on the High Street. Penrhyn House offers space for various...
10th August 2023

Eternal Media

Eternal Media is a media production social enterprise and charity, located in Wrexham, that makes high impact documentary films. Their professional, award-winning producers empower and mentor volunteer film crews, which comprise people who are rebuilding their lives and are recovering from addiction and/or an involvement in...

Stories


6th October 2024

A 36-Year Journey: Tim Leighton

Around 1990, Tim met Dr Tony Ryle, one of the most remarkable people that he has ever met. Tony invited him to join a group of people who were helping to develop Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT). Tim started spending a day a week at St Thomas’s Hospital in London where Tony was offering supervised practice in the...
17th September 2023

My Addiction & Recovery: Wendy Dossett

At that time, her life was unravelling, she was experiencing a lot of suicidal ideation and attempting suicide, and was clinging on to a job with ‘splintering finger nails’. She was living in a mouldy touring caravan in a field, showering in the university she worked at...
10th November 2023

Changing Face of Treatment and Recovery: Wulf Livingston

Recovering people were taken on in treatment services as peer supporters or support workers. Now that recovering people had jobs within the treatment system, they couldn’t advocate for radical recovery in the same way they had when they were outside the system.

Themes


16th September 2023

Connection

James Deakin emphasises that members of North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC) have to not only attend mutual aid groups, but also engage in a minimum of 20-30 hours community social activities a week. 'It's forming those sober connections, it's being around other people that are clean and sober... it's about connection.'
4th February 2025

Beyond the Individual: David Best

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? Wulf reminds us that treatment is too transactional.
3rd March 2024

What Helped Most?: Rhoda Emlyn-Jones OBE

'Give people no more, and no less than they need to take that journey through to an outcome they've been able to articulate with you, that they've never been able to articulate with anyone else because no one’s listening. So we really need to create that momentum, don’t we...

Extras


22nd September 2023

Three Things to Know About Mental Health and Trauma

‘Human beings are human beings. We don’t change our minds because a bunch of scientists publish a set of recommendations and issue them.... Those don’t change public opinion. What changes people are the storytellers in our society.'
8th September 2023

Simon’s Recovery Story: ‘Gratitude For the Life I Thought Was Over…’

The results of that first meeting, and the effect on my life, were immense. I’m certain that there is a small element of hope—or faith or some kind of spiritual flame—that burns inside us all. I believe it’s never completely extinguished, but can become so dim that it’s almost invisible to us.
20th September 2023

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), Part 1

'Everyone has a gift (they are born with), a skill (they have learned and practiced, and could potentially share/teach), and a passion (that they act on) that they can contribute to the wellbeing of their community. Social movements grow stronger...'

About us


Testimonials


  • David’s work across many decades has laid the groundwork for words and practices that today trip off the tongue, such as ‘recovery movement’ and ‘cultural trauma’. The Recovery Voices website brings his insights from the field into one home. It also invites us to the meal table within that house. He and his collaborator Wulf Livingston rightly reserve a special seat for the people and communities whose stories we must hear into full expression to move towards genuine reconciliation. Thank you, David, for your continued groundbreaking work and the wholehearted way you convene us into the heartland of an alternative future. Cormac Russell, Author of Rekindling Democracy and Co-author of The Connected Community.

  • I’m glad that this new website has been launched—it’ll help people share their experience of what it means to be human and help remind them of the simplicity of the recovery journey to wholeness. Congratulations to my friends David, Wulf, and colleagues—their dedication to helping others navigate their humanness is something I’ve long admired. Wynford Ellis Owen, Former CEO at Living Room Cardiff, Wales
  • Congratulations on the new website! Bill White (Addiction Recovery Advocate, Historian and Researcher)
  • The new resource Recovery Voices digs into the lives and experiences of people who, in recovery themselves, spend time with others seeking, or in, recovery from addictions. In identifying themes, it draws out the rich diversity of experiences, showing how there is no single 'grand narrative' of recovery, no single 'recipe', just lots of people living out their own authentic lives in ways that they greatly prefer. The site represents a tonne of voluntary work from David Clark in Australia and Wulf Livingston in Wales. Their collaboration in itself shows how recovery seeds in, and spreads from, the spaces between people in relationships. Professor Wendy Dossett, University of Chester, England
  • I’ve been learning from David’s websites for over 20 years now, and his new Recovery Voices initiative with Wulf Livingston has added a new dimension to my experiences. I love the films and through them I am ‘meeting’ new people, discovering exciting recovery community initiatives, and learning even more about recovery and related matters. It’s a little university… and it’s only just begun! Michael Scott, Australia (45 years in recovery from alcohol addiction, 40 years as a drug and alcohol treatment practitioner)