I got a real shock when I moved to Perth in Western Australia in late 2008 and saw the poor state of the addiction treatment system and the relative lack of recovery-oriented care. I met some very frustrated treatment workers who really hoped I could help create some kind of change. Vested interest was too strong and I eventually gave up.
David Best moved to Australia after me, to Melbourne on the other side of a very large country. He had more mixed experiences to me, although he also saw a relative lack of recovery-oriented care. In this two films, he describes briefly his time in Melbourne.
Life in Australia [5’42”]
When he moved to Melbourne in Australia, David was very fortunate to meet Professor Dan Lubman, a wonderful and inspirational figure who is not a part of the traditional clinical orthodoxy and is very critical of traditional treatment models. David briefly describes some of the services he and Dan set up in Melbourne, including the Recovery Academy which was hosted at Turning Point.
When he moved to Australia, David was absolutely savaged by Alex Wodak and other harm reductionists for being a carrier of that ‘evil disease of recovery’, which was seen as a right-wing conspiracy to reduce spending on drug treatment. Social identity theory gave David a useful framework for shaping some of his recovery work. He started to engage with people like William White and Robert Granfield in the US.