Extras

16th September 2023

‘Healing is in Our Stories’ by Deron Drumm RIP

'The beautiful people that I am so grateful to know have found meaning in despair and have found the strength and courage to seek out their current life path. There is no question that they are stronger and more compassionate people because of their experiences.'
16th September 2023

Reducing Suicide By Connecting To Culture

The destruction of Aboriginal culture by the colonisation process has played a key role in this youth suicide. Becoming disconnection from one’s culture can eradicate a person’s sense of self (or identity), their self-worth and their emotional wellbeing. They cannot function from...
16th September 2023

Tim’s Story: ‘Doctor in Recovery’

I learned more about addiction and recovery than I thought it possible to know… and more besides. The most valuable stuff I learned from my peers and other recovering people. Mutual aid meetings were an important component of the treatment programme. I remember sitting in my first meeting...
16th September 2023

Recovery, Reintegration, and Anti-Discrimination: Julian Buchanan

The paper highlights ‘the debilitating nature of marginalisation and social exclusion that many long term problem drug users have experienced. It concludes by suggesting a new social model to understand and conceptualise the process of recovery from drug...
15th September 2023

Ian and Irene’s Story, ‘Living Through Our Son’s Addiction and Death: Our Journey to Recovery’

Sometimes, it’s the little things that are significant recovery moments. Like the many comments from family members who we’ve supported, confirming to us that their contacting CPSG has been of genuine benefit...
15th September 2023

On Relationships and Connectedness: Bruce Perry

‘... I’m very concerned about poverty of relationships in modern society. In our work, we find the best predictor of your current mental health is your current “relational health”, or connectedness. This connectedness is fueled by two things: the basic capabilities you’ve developed...'
15th September 2023

The Nature of Healing: Voices of We Al-li

'My medicine is listening to other people too. First time I as in a meeting like this, and I listened to others talking, I though they were talking about my life, their experiences were like my experiences. Their feelings were like my feelings. They were stealing my story—I wanted to know how did they know my story and what it felt like to be me.'
15th September 2023

Journeys, Part 2: Living With Heroin Addiction

For some heroin addicts, everyday life can be reduced to simply responding to the body’s needs—finding the funds to pay for heroin to be used that day (which might involve acquiring and then selling items), purchasing, and then taking the drug. This can become a full-time job...
14th September 2023

Iain’s Recovery Story: ‘This is Me’

I then decided that enough was enough, the script had to stop. I realised that if I didn’t do something about getting off methadone, I could end up getting stuck in a situation where the methadone kept getting increased. This was something I wanted to avoid at all costs, since I would be just changing one dependency (an illegal one) for...
14th September 2023

Healing Trauma – Overlooking Fundamental Truths: Bessel van der Kolk

The reality is that there is little evidence that mental illness is caused by specific chemical imbalances (the brain disease model), or that psychiatric drugs are actually beneficial to people in the long-term.
14th September 2023

The Healing Forest

'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.'
14th September 2023

Journeys, Part 1: Descent Into Heroin Addiction

There’s no sign that says, ‘you’re now entering addiction’, there’s no big sign that says, ‘you’ll need to stop now, if you go once more that’s you’. You just cross that line and you don’t realise you’ve crossed it until you try to stop. I didn’t think about withdrawal symptoms...
13th September 2023

Sapphire’s Recovery Story: ‘It Should All Be About the Person’

They believed that I didn’t need the same dose of methadone as I wasn’t now using illicit or unprescribed drugs, ignoring the fact that it was because of this dose of methadone that I was able to abstain from other drugs and alcohol. Their logic seemed to be...
13th September 2023

‘What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing’: Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey

'Many of us experience adversity that has a lasting impact on our physical and emotional health. What happens to us in childhood is a powerful predictor of our risk for health problems down the road and offers scientific insights into the patterns of behaviors so many struggle to understand. Here, Winfrey shares stories from her own...
13th September 2023

Understanding Intentional Behavioural Change

The Processes of Change are the cognitive/experiential and behavioural activities that facilitate change. The extent to which each of these processes is used depends on what state of change the person who has a problematic behaviour has reached.