community — Page 4 — Recovery Stories

‘The Potential of Recovery Capital’ by David Best and Alexandre Laudet

January 22, 2014

Here’s a classic text from David Best and Alexandre Laudet on recovery capital. This paper is part of the RSA project on recovery. Here is an introduction to the paper from the RSA.

‘The addictions field is now overflowing with references to ‘recovery’ with service providers and workers increasingly designated as ‘recovery-focused’, although in many areas there is confusion as to what that may mean in practice and what needs to change.

There is an increasing awareness that people do recover, but we have limited knowledge or science of what enables this to happen or at what point in the recovery journey. There is also the recognition that recovery is something that is grounded in the community and that it is a transition that can occur without professional input, and where professional input is involved, the extent of its role is far from clear.

‘Unraveling the Mystery of Personal and Family Recovery: An Interview with Stephanie Brown, PhD’ by Bill White (Part 5)

January 21, 2014

Bill White: Your work has enhanced understanding of the intergenerational nature of alcohol and other drug problems. Have you envisioned how such intergenerational cycles might finally be broken?

Stephanie Brown: I think we’ve started to name and describe what happens in addicted families across generations, which is helping us understand family addiction and the complexities of family recovery. And I think we are poised to move beyond our current focus on the genetic and neurobiological influence on intergenerational transmission of addiction to include exploration of the larger psychological and social processes involved.

We need more family research to understand the transmission process and the kinds of family and community support processes that can influence these cycles and positively disrupt them.

‘Unraveling the Mystery of Personal and Family Recovery: An Interview with Stephanie Brown, PhD’ by Bill White (Part 4)

January 20, 2014

We continue Bill White’s interview with Stephanie Brown on family recovery. I cannot emphasise to you enough how important Stephanie’s work is.

‘Bill White: It poses the question of what the ideal scaffolding would be like that could support recovery.

Stephanie Brown: I think we understand much better today that the family encounters a vacuum on entering recovery with or without formal treatment or outpatient therapy. This vacuum within the family, and the same kind of vacuum in the community – the neighborhood, town, city, work, school, and social environments – is a significant problem.

Recovery Stories Highlight: ‘What is Recovery?” by David Best

January 11, 2014

I thought I’d devote Saturdays to re-publishing some of my favourite blogs. Here is the first:

‘David Best has done a huge amount for the addiction recovery field and for the Recovery Movements in the UK and Australia, in terms of his research, writings, advocacy and a wide range of other recovery-based activities. Where he gets his energy from, I have no idea?

I thought it was worth showing what David thinks about the question, ‘What is Recovery’. I’ve followed his arguments and included quotes from his excellent book, Addiction Recovery: A Movement for Social Change and Personal Growth in the UK.

Read More ➔

Category: Blog Tags: belonging, community, definition, hope, identity, role model, strengths, treatment

Indigenous Hip Hop Projects: Rockhole

January 10, 2014

I’m a boring old codger and have never been a great fan of hip hop. But I absolutely love this film clip, the song and the amazing project. This had me skipping around the house and I’m now a Hip Hop fan.

Please share this with all your friends. And ask them to do the same. It deserves to go viral and it would do great things for the Indigenous Hip Hop Project project and, ultimately, Aboriginal people!

‘Indigenous Hip Hop Projects was proud to partner with Wurli – Wurlinjang Health Service and Rockhole community to make this deadly health promotional music video.’

Fantastic stuff! Keep up the great work, IHHP. And well done Rockhole community. You are stars!!

Category: Blog Tags: aboriginal, australia, community, health promotion, hip hop, indigenous hip hop projects, music video, rockhole

‘About Mad in America’ by Robert Whitaker

January 6, 2014

“We started Mad in America as a webzine in February of 2012 and we launched it with the thought that it would become a forum for rethinking psychiatry and also for building a community of people, an international community of people interested in that topic.”

I love the Mad in America website and have been inspired by Robert Whitaker’s books. We’ll be referring to content on this website a great deal. In this short film clip, Robert describes the purpose, history, achievements, community, and future plans of Mad In America.

Category: Blog Tags: community, human rights, mad in america, mental health disorders, psychiatry, recovery, robert whitaker, voice

‘We Are Meant to Heal in a Community’ by Douglas Bloch

January 6, 2014

“Anything that promotes a sense of isolation often leads to illness and suffering, while that which promotes a sense of love and intimacy, connection and community, is healing.” Dean Ornish

‘In my last blog, I talked about how I was attempting to cope with a “mini-relapse” without using psychiatric drugs. One Sunday morning in the midst of this episode I awoke in a particularly dismal state. I didn’t have a structure planned for the day. And without something to look forward to, both my anxiety and depression increased.

As I lay in bed, trying to convince myself to get up, the phone rang. It was a cycling friend, Sandy, calling to see if I wanted to go on a bicycle ride.

Greeting for 2014 and New Years Eve in The Living Room, Cardiff

January 1, 2014

First of all, Ash and I would like to wish you all the best for 2014.

As some of you will know, Ash first developed the Daily Dose website for me back in 2001. We worked together for a number of years and then lost touch for awhile. However, we got in touch with each other again about a year ago and Ash developed the Recovery Stories website for me. Yesterday, we met for the first time in years when I visited him in Cilfrew (near Neath), South Wales. It was good to see him and his family after such a long time.

My two youngest children – Sam and Natasha – and I have been staying with Wynford Ellis Owen and his wife Meira just north of Cardiff. Wynford developed and runs The Living Room Recovery Centre in Cardiff. We attended their New Year Eve Party last night and had a great time. Thank you to all for helping us have such a great time.

Mark Gilman: Positive social networks and recovering from addiction

December 16, 2013

‘No one can do it for you and you can’t do it alone’, get on the boat, any boat, and talk about the technique / route later and don’t do it on your own!’

Early In June, I blogged about what Bill White refers to as a recovery carrier. ‘Recovery carriers are people, usually in recovery, who make recovery infectious to those around them by their openness about their recovery experiences, their quality of life and character, and the compassion for and service to people still suffering from alcohol and other drug problems.’

Well, many people in the UK will know Mark Gilman as a recovery carrier par excellence. Mark has been advocating for recovery for number of years now and has almost certainly visited more recovery communities and initiatives than anyone in the UK. He is one of the funniest people you will ever hear talk about recovery. Mark also shows that you don’t need to be in recovery to be a great advocate.

‘Community Recovery’ by Bill White

December 10, 2013

Another excellent paper by Arthur Evans, Roland Lamb and Bill White, highlighted in the latter’s recent blog.

“In the Red Road to Wellbriety, the individual, family and community are not separate; they are one. To injure one is to injure all; to heal one is to heal all.” The Red Road to Wellbriety, 2002

As a field, we have long known that the effects of personal addiction ripple through families, social networks and organizations. But might whole communities and whole cultures be so wounded by prolonged alcohol and other drug problems that they are themselves in need of a sustained recovery process? This suggestion is the premise of a new paper co-authored by Dr. Arthur Evans, Jr., Roland Lamb and myself just published in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly.

Asset Based Community Development & The Big Society

November 28, 2013

“Care in a Big Society comes from people. It doesn’t come from programmes and it doesn’t comes from services. And often it can’t be managed because care is the freely given gift of the heart, one person to another.”

“We need to figure out how we become caring again and where the domain of care lies. Systems, services, institutions provide services, very important, very valid services. But communities, families, neighbourhoods is where care is created.”

Cormac Russell, Managing Director of Nurture Development talks to Dominic Lodge, CEO of ROCC about ABCD, and how a big society can be a caring society.

Category: Blog Tags: ABCD, Big Society, care, citizens, community, cormac russell, John McKnight, marginalised people

‘Trauma Change Resilience’ by Dr. Megan McElheran at TEDxYYC

November 11, 2013

“If, on a day-to-day basis, we as individuals and as members participating in our communities are better able to operate from a position where all experience is valued, I think we will be healthier and better able to address the challenges in our lives from a place of being willing and able to have an experience whatever those challenges should entail.”

As Canada begins to assimilate its soldiers from Afghanistan, Dr. Megan McElheran’s undertaking is an important mission. The Stanford-educated doctor of psychology is one of a team of 13 at the federally-funded CareWest Operational Stress Injury (OSI) Clinic tasked with diagnosing and treating psychologically-injured soldiers returning from the fields of battle in Afghanistan, as well as previous conflicts and peacekeeping missions.

Megan’s work also includes addressing the burgeoning awareness of the impact of operational stress-related injuries on current serving and veteran members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Category: Blog Tags: challenges, change, community, PTSD, reilience, soldiers, stress, trauma

‘I was confronted by a sight I will not forget for as long as I live’ by Wynford Ellis Owen

November 3, 2013

My good friend Wynford Ellis Owen toured recovery centres and initiatives in the north-east of America late in 2010. He used some of the information he gleaned from this trip to help him build The Living Room recovery centre in Cardiff. Wynford wrote a number of blogs on this trip and here is part of one from mid-November 2010.

‘“People in recovery have a real understanding of what it means to struggle to be OK as opposed to what it means to struggle to seem OK.”

One of the many insightful sayings that punctuated my conversation over dinner this evening (Tuesday 9th November) with Roland Lamb, Director of the Office of Addiction Services in the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioural Health and Mental Retardation Services (DBH/MRS).

Cormac Russell explains Asset Based Community Development

October 24, 2013

“Asset Based Community Development really is the focus on what exists in communities and within individuals that they can use to grow community to get the kind of life that they want, a life of their choosing…

… What it also recognises is that there are some barriers to people doing that, to focusing on what they have. And probably some of those barriers relate to the fact that over the last 30-40 years we have become very focused on what people don’t have, what people need to receive…

‘Powering America’ by John McKnight

October 18, 2013

I want to follow up John McKnight’s video from the other day with one of his blogs, from March 2011.

‘In a neighborhood, people are empowered by the work they do together. Often, they use this power to confront institutions and advocate for the neighborhood’s self-interest. In this kind of action, power is understood as our ability to get someone else to do something for us. This is the consumer power of confrontation.

The other kind of neighborhood power results when we come together to create something for ourselves – from ourselves. This is the power of citizens engaged in community building.

John McKnight on where change begins

October 17, 2013

“One of those men belong to one association and one belongs to none. Statistically, the one who belongs to one association will live two years longer than the one who belongs to none. Now you can measure medical interventions, but hardly any would claim that they make you live two years longer.”

In his forty years working with impoverished American communities, John McKnight witnessed incredible social change at the grassroots. He discovered that the majority of the solutions to issues like unwanted teenage pregnancy and crime depended on empowering local citizens and building relationships at the community level.

Although social innovations disrupt the status quo in boundary-breaking and sector-spanning ways, change begins with the individual and their surrounding network.

Category: Blog Tags: ABCD, asset-based, association, community, grassroots, John McKnight, relationships, social change

‘A healthy mind in a healthy society’ by Dinyar Godrej

October 16, 2013

Here’s a wonderful blog on the mental health scene from the New Internationalist magazine.

Sitting in the waiting room of a busy psychologists’ practice in Rotterdam, I’m intrigued by the furtive nature of the experience. People waiting for their 50 minutes of focused talk avoid each other’s eyes, acknowledging each other with embarrassment, if at all. I could be in the waiting room of a sexually transmitted diseases clinic.

I’m a bit puzzled. With the increased familiarity of stress-related problems nowadays, shouldn’t this kind of guilt (no other word quite captures it) be a thing of the past?

‘Felling the Forest’ by Rebecca Daddow

October 15, 2013

Here’s an interesting blog from Rebecca Daddow of Nurture Development.

‘This past weekend, I watched the film Get Low – it was recommended to me by Cormac following a conversation about Community Builders (can you spot who the Community Builder is in the film?). It is a film filled with wonderful acknowledgements of the gifts we possess and find naturally around us. In many ways, it speaks to some of the core values of ABCD.

One of the scenes that resonated most with me sees the main character, Felix, walking through the forest that grows on his land with an old friend, Mattie, who he has reconnected with after 40 years of self-imposed isolation:

Mattie: “It really is beautiful out here. It probably looked like this everywhere 100 years ago.”

Felix: “If you leave things alone, they know what to do”

‘Addiction can’t always be cured so let’s focus on quality of life’ by David Best

October 10, 2013

David Best has a new short article out in The Conversation. Would be great if you could sign up and comment.

‘Alcohol and substance abuse costs the Australian economy A$24.5bn a year. The human toll from accidents, overdoses, chronic disease, violence, mental illness and family disruption, however, is immeasurable.

Modern, evidence-based policy responses to addiction focus on treatment, where patients aim to withdraw from drugs through therapy and medications. Harm-minimisation strategies such as the supply of clean needles and syringes and the prescribing of substitution medications are also key elements of Australia’s drug strategy.

‘The Four Walls’ by Mark Ragins

October 7, 2013

Here’s some great earlier writing on recovery from Mark Ragins, who set up The Village in California. This is what recovery is about!

‘In 1989, the California State Legislature authorized the funding for three model mental health programs, including the Village Integrated Service Agency in Long Beach, in part to answer the question, “Does anything work?”

We created a radical departure from traditional mental health services basing our entire system on psychosocial rehabilitation principles, quality of life outcomes and community integration. Arguably, we have created the most comprehensive, integrated and effective recovery based mental health program anywhere.