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26th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 26th February 2025
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Stories Section Posts: David Best

David was invited to an inspirational 12-Step graduation ceremony at HM Prison Lancaster Farms, where he witnessed a level of emotional intensity and gratitude, along with a collective feeling of empowerment and belonging, that he had never seen whilst working at the so-called centre for excellence, the National Addiction...
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25th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 25th February 2025
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Recovery Trails Film: Lucke Gabriel

‘Even when you’re in pain. Even when you are really hurting. Even when you are feeling really broken, you can actually get through these challenges. But not on your own, as a team. As a community, we do it together. That’s how we get well. Stuff like this is just priceless, and it’s kind of spreading the message that recovery is a really...
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24th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 24th February 2025
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Healing Environments: Dr. Bruce Perry

But the key to change, honestly, is that you have a healing environment that’s filled with people who see you. Who make you feel that you belong. Because what they then allow you to do, is that when you are in need of a regulatory interaction where somebody just is present, you can do that. When you're in need of somebody who is...
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22nd February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 22nd February 2025
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US Recovery Initiatives: David Best

One exciting place that David has visited is Chesterfield County Jail in Virginia, where they have a Therapeutic Community (TC) in the jail. None of the staff decide who can go into the TC or get chucked out; it’s all peer-based decision making. What's more, when people graduate from the drug programme in the jail...
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19th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 19th February 2025
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Themes Section Posts: 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?
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18th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 18th February 2025
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Hadrian’s Wall Walk, 2016: North Wales Recovery Communities

The idea in conducting this expedition in was two-fold. Firstly, to give the Penryhn residents an occasion where they would go way beyond anything they thought they could achieve. Where they would experience, and overcome, extreme hardship. Secondly, to challenge...
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17th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 17th February 2025
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Leaning Into Vulnerability: Carlie Atkinson

'... I am leaning into my vulnerabilities as part of my healing. It takes courage to be vulnerable, and there is strength in that. If sharing this encourages even one person to embrace their challenges within this neurotypical system, to be kind to themselves, or to...'
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12th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 12th February 2025
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Theme Films Playlist: 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?
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11th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 11th February 2025
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Self-Change and Recovery Capital

Granfield and Cloud described other assets that a person possesses or that exist within their immediate environment that can function to promote and sustain recovery from drug- and alcohol-related problems. These assets are described as various forms of recovery capital, defined as: ‘…. the breadth and depth of internal and...
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10th February 2025
Author: Wulf Livingston Posted: 10th February 2025
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A Conversation With David Best

There is a resonance through our conversation and David’s work that what recovery does at its heart is to transform. It does this through contagion, i.e. it spreads from one person to another, from one community to another. Importantly, the transformation is not only for those recovering from difficult experiences of alcohol...
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9th February 2025
Author: Wulf Livingston & David Clark Posted: 9th February 2025
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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...
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5th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 5th February 2025
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Helping People Overcome Emotional Distress: The Power Threat Meaning Framework

It highlights and clarifies the links between wider social factors such as poverty, discrimination and inequality, along with traumas such as abuse and violence, and the resulting emotional distress or troubled behaviour, whether it is confusion, fear, despair or troubled or troubling behaviour. It also shows why those of us who...
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4th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 4th February 2025
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Life in Australia: David Best

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...
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4th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 4th February 2025
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Treatment vs. Recovery: David Best

Whilst working at the National Addiction Centre and later being head of research for the National Treatment Agency (NTA), David unhappily watched the industrialisation of addiction treatment. The industry paid a lot of mortgages and supported many people’s career development, but it didn’t benefit of the people who needed help.
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4th February 2025
Author: David Clark Posted: 4th February 2025
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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.
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