Blog

1st April 2024

Most Viewed Posts, March 2024

Content relating to Wulf's interviews with Tim Leighton and Gary Rutherford took up six of the spots in our ten most viewed posts of the month. Top of the list was my blog post about my favourite columnist of The Guardian newspaper, John Crace, celebrating the 37th anniversary of the beginning of his recovery from heroin addiction.
28th March 2024

Stages of Behavioural Change

Maintenance is the stage where the new behaviour pattern becomes automatic, requiring little thought or effort to sustain it. The new behaviour becomes integrated into the lifestyle of the person. However, there is still an ever-present danger of reverting back to the old pattern—lapses or relapses may occur.
27th March 2024

Theme Clip Playlist: Gary Rutherford

‘So, if you willingly engage in something that's difficult and you do it enough times and you do it regularly, then you become resilient…. And that translates to recovery, because for me, recovery is just resilience in motion. That's literally what it is. It's every day, it's getting stronger and stronger and stronger.’
26th March 2024

Government Strategies & Shortcomings: Tim Leighton

The huge promise of Dame Carol Black’s two recent reports on drug treatment, prevention and recovery has been squandered by government. Much funding is being wasted, or put towards traditional services who have a tendency to provide what is often called ‘spray-on...'
25th March 2024

Introducing Gary Rutherford of ARC Fitness

In this interview with Gary, we capture so much about what has inspired us to do this series. We have a recovery leader, a champion, who has taken his own personal recovery journey and understanding, and transformed it into a vibrant and thriving recovery community.
22nd March 2024

My ‘Background Briefings’ in Drink and Drugs News

Claire and Ian, and their team, have done a remarkable job with DDN over the years. Today, it still remains a magazine of the highest quality. It helped realise my (and Simon Shepherd’s) dream of seeing a field that is much better informed than it was all those years ago when...
21st March 2024

Tim Leighton: My Reflections & His Story

On 18 March 2009, Tim and I both spoke at a conference in London organised by Action on Addiction and my grassroots initiative Wired In, with the main speaker being leading US recovery advocate Bill White. Recovery advocates from around the UK attended the conference...
20th March 2024

Theme Clip Playlist: Tim Leighton

... Bill White pointed out that there was a paradigm shift occurring in the addiction world, from a pathology and intervention paradigm to a recovery management paradigm, where the role of professionals is to introduce people to recovery and connect them to recovery resources which can help them create a meaningful life...
19th March 2024

My Conversation With Tim Leighton

Our latest release is an Interview with Tim Leighton, in which the abundance of value and values comes across very strongly. In this conversation, we have managed to catch from Tim a beautiful integration of community, educational, personal, political, professional, research and theoretical understandings about recovery.
18th March 2024

Our ‘Extras’ Section of Recovery Voices

I just wanted to remind you about our five sections of Extras that you can find on our website. They contain a wide range of content (66 pieces) that I have written over the years for our sister website Recovery Stories. Sections include one with 15 articles about addiction, recovery and treatment, some focused on Wired In research...
15th March 2024

Happy 1st Anniversary, The Scheme

In such a short space of time, the charity, set up by Aidan Martin and Mark Deans, has seen more than 1,100 attendees at its various workshops, including creative writing, lego, film making and art. An incredible 200 people turned up to the film group's premiere video. The charity also carries out work in Addiewell Prison...
14th March 2024

The Healing Forest: Don Coyhis

'It means that we must actively heal the community and its institutions at the same time an individual works on his or her own healing from alcohol or drugs or other unwell behaviours. The individual affects the community and the community affects the individual. They are inseparable from the point of view of addiction recovery.'
13th March 2024

2021 ‘No Shame’ Campaign: ARC Fitness

I am inspired and deeply moved by the 'No Shame' Campaign that ARC Fitness organised in 2021. Gary Rutherford ran five marathons in five days, all while wearing a 22lb weight vest to symbolise the heavy burden of shame that often acts as a barrier to recovery. He fractured his leg on the second day, but continued...
12th March 2024

37th Anniversary: John Crace

'Barring any last minute relapses, tomorrow will be the 37th anniversary of my getting clean. No drugs, no alcohol. I call that a result. I had no idea what I was doing really when the 30-year-old me walked through the entrance of the rehab centre on the morning of 9 March 1987. I had even brought a cassette player...' 8 March
11th March 2024

Zooming in on Marcus Fair and NWRC Members

I spent an interesting early evening last Friday here in Perth, Western Australia, when I joined members of North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC) at their Community Meeting & Breakfast (I didn't get any) at Penrhyn House in Bangor... via Zoom. I was able to see and hear guest...