Gary Rutherford is the Founder of ARC Fitness recovery community in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland, a really very special initiative. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to ARC and meeting Gary’s inspiring team in May 2024. These two films describe how ARC Fitness was developed.
Setting Up ARC: Heart & Desire [8’55”]
Gary eventually got sober and retrained as a nurse. He became a psychiatric nurse in a mental health crisis service, working with guys who were acutely ‘really unwell’. He then started working in an addiction service. He felt that he ‘had landed’; this is where his purpose had got him, and this was going to be him forever.
The latter was clearly not to be the case. Gary experienced different types of recovery programme—12-Step recovery, person-centred recovery, and Christian-based recovery. But for him, the biggest game changer was physical activity and exercise. He emphasises that there has been about forty years worth of research showing the positive effects of physical activity and exercise on people who are struggling psychologically.
Gary describes how his friend Tim came around to his flat four weeks after his last relapse into drinking and dragged him to a running club. The run was awful!
‘It was cold, and it was wet, and it was muddy. And I was unfit. I didn’t even look like a runner, and I puked after the session. And I was like, “That’s me. Never again. I’m retired. I’m done from running.” But Tim, also a person in recovery, he knew a wee bit better. And he came around the following week. And with some gentle persuasion and a swift kick in the backside, I found myself back at the running club the following week.’
Gary found this run a little bit easier and he didn’t die! This was enough for him to go back again… and then again… and again He was soon attending the club regularly.
‘… my identity started to shift from being somebody struggling with addiction, to being somebody who focused on their health and who loved to run. And I was surrounded by people who saw me through this different lens, and that was refreshing for me because I had always been under the impression throughout my recovery that this long-term condition was going to follow me everywhere and be the defining thing about me. And it wasn’t. And then, of course, through the exercise, self-esteem, self-worth, self-confidence, all the things that addiction had stripped away over the years, started to come back. And I loved it.’
Gary believes that many people go into treatment and therapy when they are not foundationally ready. They are just out of chaos and are exhausted and are not sleeping and eating properly. Just like a house needs a foundation, recovery needs a foundation—physical, emotional, and nutritional—before a person can start unpacking all their years of trauma and pain. And that’s where the idea of ARC came from. Another key point underlying Gary’s approach was the identity shift that he felt from other people seeing him as a person with a problem, and not a problematic person.
Gary was advocating for recovery through his social media accounts, describing his own journey and promoting hope. But things never went further because his life was so busy. He started indoor climbing and one of the guys pointed out that he had seen one of Gary’s Facebook recovery posts. He had a friend who was struggling. He asked Gary if he had ever thought of setting up a specific page about recovery.
Gary went home and created a recovery page… that one conversation whilst climbing indoors was the catalyst to creating ARC. Wulf emphasises that such serendipitous moments are so important in the developmental journeys of recovery communities.
Gary created a signposting page for local organisations and reputable personal trainers who were able to support people. Within two weeks, people were trying to refer themselves to Gary. He wasn’t expecting that. He decided to become a personal trainer and advertised for six people who wanted to start a six-week journey of sobriety through physical activity. His local gym allowed him to use their space for free to deliver this first programme. A lecturer friend helped him develop some outcome measures. They used the GAD-7 anxiety/stress scale and the PHQ-9 depression/mood scale, as well Kings College’s Substance Use Sleep Scale and Substance Use Recovery Evaluator. These questionnaires all revealed positive changes after participants completed the programme.
Gary was running his programme on his days off and in the evenings. He had no funding. At this stage, he did not have a clear directional goal. Key people he had met on his journey saw something in what he was doing, as well as his heart and desire. For Gary, it was all about helping people, not building an organisation at this stage. The other important thing was that there was a great need in his community at that time. Drug deaths were increasing, and people were getting fed up of having limited options.
Being Visible & Fair [5’58”]
Someone gifted Gary £5,000 and he was able to rent a tiny gym studio where he could train eight people. ARC was birthed from there. Programmes were run in the evenings, demand started growing, and the initiative was clearly visible on social media. Gary was very conscious of the fact that addiction and recovery are often in the shadows, and he wanted to make them far more visible by having open conversations about them.
‘… how do we expect people to reach forward, put out their hands and say they’re struggling if they feel that they don’t have the permission to be able to do that? So, let’s give people the permission.’
Gary believes that him being a nurse helped opened more doors and resulted in more options. He emphasises that he is not saying it has to be like that, but it seemed to be the case with him. He was getting busier, and more people were trying to join the programme. A community was then created. Gary points out that communities can be really difficult to manage. They are a pleasure to be part of but can be really difficult for the person who is trying to maintain and develop the community.
Gary got some extra funding and was able to free up Fridays for ARC. He went part-time after attracting more funding. Things were tough and frustrating for him when Covid first arrived. However, advantages became apparent. ARC was able to offer six rather than two fitness classes a week, and three or four group therapy sessions rather than one a week, due to delivery being online. It was able to connect more people and therefore numbers grew again.
Gary realised he now had to do a lot of work on himself. For example, he wasn’t a confident public speaker. He decided to create a ‘Thought for the Day’ video every day, which has resulted in over 300+ short films on YouTube that are focused on various aspects relating to recovery. These films really resonated with people and demand for ARC grew further. More funding was attracted.
ARC is now nearly five years old and has a team of 14 staff, of whom six are full-time. The team has three mental health nurses and two therapists. The majority of the people who work there have lived the meaningful experience of addiction, which Gary believes is really important.
He emphasises that people in recovery want to give back all the time, and that’s really important. However, their experience and work has to be valued properly. ARC treats recovering people as Facilitators and pays them for their time. Gary believes that it is easy for recovering people to be taken advantage of by organisations because of their passion and desire to give back. Wulf points out that if we don’t value recovering people for what they do, we perpetuate that myth that they are not as important as those working in the ‘professional field’.