The Stories section on our website has posts containing series of films on selected stories. The films have been created by re-editing our original long film into short (generally less than three minutes) clips, and then ‘linking’ appropriate short clips relating to a specific story by using YouTube Playlists. In the case of David Best, I have created three posts for this section on: (1) David’s transition from working in the treatment field to focusing on people’s recovery; (2) working in Melbourne, Australia, and (3) describing two inspiring recovery initiatives in the USA.
Treatment vs. Recovery [8’05”]
Whilst working at the National Addiction Centre and later being head of research for the National Treatment Agency (NTA), David unhappily watched the industrialisation of addiction treatment. The industry paid a lot of mortgages and supported many people’s career development, but it didn’t benefit the lives of the people who needed help. David felt that his colleagues were operating under the illusion that they were ‘sprinkling magic dust’ on the heads of their clients that would inoculate them for the next week or two, until they came back.
David was invited to an inspirational 12-Step graduation ceremony at HM Prison Lancaster Farms, where he witnessed a level of emotional intensity and gratitude, along with a collective feeling of empowerment and belonging, that he had never seen whilst working at the so-called centre for excellence, the National Addiction Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry. He then attended a talk given by leading US recovery advocate William White at the Scottish Parliament, which he describes as revolutionary to his thinking and understanding of recovery.
David says that he eventually decided to work in the recovery field, rather than continue working in the addiction treatment field, in part because only one was good for his health. Moreover, when he asked people at a UKESAD conference if they would fill in a questionnaire about their recovery, he was overwhelmed by their response. Several of his best friends, and people he most admires and respects, are in long-term recovery and it is a wonderful world of hope and trust to work in.
Life in Australia [5’42”]
When he moved to Melbourne in Australia, David was very fortunate to meet Professor Dan Lubman, a wonderful and inspirational figure who is not a part of the traditional clinical orthodoxy and is very critical of traditional treatment models. David briefly describes some of the services he and Dan set up in Melbourne, including the Recovery Academy which was hosted at Turning Point.
When he moved to Australia, David was absolutely savaged by Alex Wodak and other harm reductionists for being a carrier of that ‘evil disease of recovery’, which was seen as a right-wing conspiracy to reduce spending on drug treatment. Social identity theory gave David a useful framework for shaping some of his recovery work. He started to engage with people like William White and Robert Granfield in the US.
US Recovery Initiatives [3’48”]
Second Chance Opportunities in Albany, New York, is a recovery housing organisation and social enterprise janitorial service. Their philosophy is that in your first year of recovery you work as a cleaner of office buildings, a job that helps you avoid mixing with people who are not in recovery. The job isn’t going to cause you stress or lead you to temptation. After that, the recovering person can focus on their vocation and career. It is very much predicated on the idea that recovery is a phased, long-term project of personal, social and community growth.
One exciting place that David has visited is Chesterfield County Jail in Virginia, where they have a Therapeutic Community (TC) in the jail. None of the staff decide who can go into the TC or get chucked out; it’s all peer-based decision making. What’s more, when people graduate from the drug programme in the jail, they go into one of three recovery houses in the community in Richmond. They also go back into the jail one day a week to continue the TC programme and carry the message about what it is like in the outside world, so it becomes a dynamic system of support and engagement.
David Best is Professor of Addiction Recovery, and Director of the Centre for Addiction Recovery Research (CARR), at Leeds Trinity University. He holds various other senior academic posts internationally. He is a founding member of the College of Lived Experience Recovery Organisations (LEROs) in the UK and of the Inclusive Recovery Cities movement.