Recovery Advocacy, Part 2 [4 Films, 9’42”]
Wulf Livingston believes that recovery advocacy has lost its way at the moment, due to large numbers of people with lived experience being employed by drug and alcohol treatment agencies: ’You can’t challenge or be independent once you’re taking the King’s Shilling, the salary as it were.’
Wulf goes on to describe a project in Oxford in which drug and alcohol users were trained to be advocates for people in their prescribing consultations to ensure that appropriate practices were used by practitioners. The system did not like this.
Wendy Dossett and Wulf discuss the problems of trying to be an addiction recovery advocate whilst working within the system, where financial interests and status are major factors. Wulf believes that the recovery advocacy movement has receded into small communities and off the national stage.
Wendy and Wulf also discuss the role of individuals in their recovery advocacy movement: ‘It’s always a double-edged sword with individuals, isn’t it?…