David Clark

On the RAPt treatment programme, inmates met other people with similar experiences and realised that they were not alone. A sense of belonging helped them to open up and share their thoughts and experiences. It enabled them to build trusting relationships, leading...

Huseyin emphasises that Towards Recovery is about bringing people together. Members are meeting people who have experienced similar problems to their own, and have overcome them. There is a good deal of empathy in the community. People connect within the cafe, and via other activities e.g. WhatsApp, or on Strava...

He says there are about 20-30 like-minded people spread across North Wales, many of whom have been around a long time. They all know each other, have been on the same journey, and share the same values and principles. Everyone knows how to get 60-70 service users into...

It was never the deciding to give up drugs that was the problem. It was the deciding to stay off them permanently. Then one day, roughly six months after my 30th birthday, I found I meant my decision to give up smack enough to keep to it. My life had been increasingly falling apart. I’d been overdosing regularly and could see that, if I didn’t stop, I would be dead within a year.

Caitlin sits down to talk with Marcus Fair about his 25-year long battle with crack and heroin addiction—to how he went from writing himself off in his early 20’s, to years of spells in prison and homelessness, to then how he found long-term recovery and founded Eternal Media a charity and social enterprise with the goal of supporting others...

Interviewees had to shape a new identity and social involvement in worlds that are not associated with drug use. An essential element underlying recovery is people being accepted as ‘normal’ by so-called normal society. Former users of heroin may be reluctant to engage...

In Wendy’s research, only 25% of her Fellowship participants described themselves as religious. Many people who stick around in the Fellowships interpret Higher Power in secular ways. She points out that lots of ideas found in SMART Recovery, which presents itself as...

David started to drink more and more to alleviate his increasing anxiety. He eventually realised that his drinking levels were not that different to the people who were coming to see him for their alcohol problems. However, he rationalised that he could not have a problem as...

‘If recovery is a journey from London to Manchester, then treatment is the taxi ride to the station.’ Huseyin argues that the taxi-ride to the station has become a proxy for the journey. Taxi drivers convince you to get into their taxi so you can get to the station (treatment), but when you get there you don’t know which train to take to continue...

In the Kimberley, that emotional pain did not surface. I started to feel at peace with myself. And with my past. I loved every moment of our days, waking up to magical sights and sounds, and sharing the beauty of this magical Country... My experiences made me reflect on how Aboriginal people are connected to their Country...

NWRC members have to engage in 20-30 hours of organised social activities a week. This is important so that members can be around people and form strong positive, ’sober’ connections. Addiction is disconnection, recovery is connection. Right from the beginning, people are encouraged to get assimilated into a group...

‘"It was 25 years, just looking like a skull on a stick." Eating every three days, if he remembered, and if he could get into the local garage to rob something. He’d travel around the country buying heroin. He used to wear out towns, rather quickly, because of the amount of crime in which he was involved. He had to keep moving on.

Stories give cognitive and emotional significance to experience. 'Stories are amusing, memorable, and absorbing; they are also instructive, informative and orienting… We construct and negotiate our social identity through the stories we tell other people (and through the stories that then get repeated about us).'

'Fear doesn't consume me anymore. Instead of being emotionally shut down, crippled by feelings of worthlessness and despair, I am thriving, developing and growing. I have learned how to love and be loved, how to help and be helped. I'm just a guy who found recovery and was shown the way out of addiction. For me it will always be a lifelong programme of maintenance.'

Once I started meeting and listening to people with, or who were recovering from, a serious substance use problem, I knew immediately I was doing something important. I was learning key information that not only would shape my own behaviours, but other people’s as well. I knew I had to start writing Recovery Stories...