All Posts

8th September 2023

Addiction and Psychological Pain: Gabor Maté

'It is critical to understand that although addiction is a problem it is also an attempt to solve a graver problem that is, unbearable psychic pain. To understand addiction we need to understand human pain and that takes us to focus on childhood experiences. One of the outcomes...'
8th September 2023

Dealing, Addiction & Torture: James Deakin

James can’t sell his supply of the drug, for which he has not paid. Realising he is in serious trouble, he does a bunk to Bangor in North Wales. However, the dealers track him down and bundle him into the boot of a car. He is shipped back to Manchester and tortured over a period of days.
8th September 2023

Factors That Facilitate Recovery

Wendy Dossett and Wulf Livingston discuss various factors at an individual, system and societal level that help people recover from addiction. These factors include the power of community; having an environment where choices are available, as well as signposting, communication and collaboration; and an environment...
8th September 2023

Addiction, Recovery, and Treatment: An Introduction

Treatment can facilitate the initiation of recovery, but is not in a person’s life long enough to produce long-term recovery. The initial ‘gains’ facilitated by treatment in the early stages of recovery are built upon by the person’s interactions in their social environment and facilitated...
23rd August 2023

How It All Began

Marcus Fair spent 25 years battling an addiction to heroin and crack cocaine, and long periods of homelessness and being in prison, before finding long-term recovery and founding Eternal Media in 2015. His primary goal in setting up this charity and social enterprise was to help other people in their recovery journey.
23rd August 2023

For the ‘Now What?’

For people who had lived almost exclusively in the world of addiction—for many years, some may have spent entire days shoplifting, selling the goods, buying the drug and using—it can be extremely difficult to know what to do when they stop using. This is a problem that Marcus emphasises in the second film below.
23rd August 2023

Reflections

Marcus and Wulf reflect on a variety of issues including: why the vast majority of money is spent on helping people 'get off' drugs compared to helping them 'stay off'; the need to put more power into the hands of the experts, the people with lived experience' the role of the Chief Constable of North Wales, Simon Shaw...
23rd August 2023

Recovery Hub Podcast

Eternal Media's Recovery Hub Podcast (RHP) is designed to give a voice to those in recovery. RHP features conversations between people in recovery, intimate recounting of stories of addiction, finding recovery and how they live their lives in recovery. We also cover the topics of crime, rehabilitation, politics and...
10th August 2023

Arriving on the Scene

Huseyin describes how he first set up Towards Recovery in 2012, starting out by renting a church coffee shop for monthly evening gatherings. He and his colleagues wanted to make recovery visible, letting people see 'it' and decide whether they wanted to connect to it. They also organised a few conferences, with...
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...
10th August 2023

What We Are About

Towards Recovery is about bringing people together in order to help each other and themselves. Some people are in long-term recovery, others in the early stages of recovery, whilst others are thinking of moving on from their addiction. There is a good deal of empathy in the community and...
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

The Role of Community

Earlier this year, Huseyin wrote a series of 40 articles which he called the Lent Blog. These articles were all related in some way or other to recovery.  They ranged from 'Staying motivated', to Strategies for overcoming feelings of shame and stigma', and 'Cultivating empathy'. Here is one of Huseyin's articles...
10th August 2023

Journeys Podcast

We speak to people who have lived experience of recovery from addiction, people who have been affected by addiction and those working in the addiction and recovery field—in its many contexts. There is a lot of information about addiction, but people get better and their stories need to be visible...