Marc Laithwaite and his incredible team of staff and volunteers have supported our founder Rich …
The loss of a friend, Phil, who died alone in a temporary bed sit at …
I love interacting with people in recovery from addiction, and many have become my close …
At a time when our society is becoming more and more disconnected, we need to …
Here you will find the words of people from around the globe. These blog posts include written accounts of individuals in recovery as well as those of world leading advocates. They aim to provide a broad spectrum of information, ranging from people with lived experience of overcoming adversity as well as some wonderfully informative insights from professionals in the field of recovery, trauma, mental health, and community development.
He was a GP like me and he had drunk in a similar way to me and he had the same kind of consequences as me and he felt the same as me. He was a few years into his recovery and I identified and connected with him to the degree that I suddenly thought, “Oh my God, if he can do it, maybe I can do it.”
We are fundamentally social creatures—our brains are wired to foster working and playing together. Trauma devastates the social-engagement system and interferes with cooperation, nurturing, and the ability to function as a productive member of the clan … Yet institutions that deal with traumatized children …
I believe that we who care about addiction and the environment must continue the heroic rescue work, but I also believe that the even more essential task is getting rid of “the-son of-a-bitch upstream,” i.e. the vicious cycle that is described by the global, historical view of addiction.
Most clients entering a treatment environment / relationship do so with fear and ambivalence. The fear is the fear of an alien environment, the feeling of vulnerability and lack of control, and the suspicion that they are in a place where they will not be understood or accepted.
But the key to change, honestly, is that you have a healing environment that’s filled with people who see you. Who make you feel that you belong. Because what they then allow you to do, is that when you are in need of a regulatory interaction where somebody just is present, you can do that.
Change does not merely imply stopping use, but redefining one’s entire life. It is not just about escaping addiction, but escaping the context that makes addiction meaningful, and catching up with the demands of an institutional life that they may have little or no experience of.
