Recovery Stories Weekly, Issue 1

I thought I’d start a weekly column linking to the blog posts and other content loaded on Recovery Stories in the past week. I’ll also include any other news. It will give readers a chance to catch up on what has been going on.

I started blogging regularly again on Recovery Stories on 29 March 2021 after a six year hiatus. The original content, generated from May 2013 and including over 700 blog posts, had still been available during my break. Since my return, I’ve added 60 blog posts, along with other content. I have also launched the eBook Our Recovery Stories: Journeys from Drug and Alcohol Addiction on the 9th April 2021. So here is this past week’s content:

Blog: this week’s posts on my blog.

‘Hope is the Word That Can Free Us From Addiction’ by o2b3: A short story about recovery from the days of our online community Wired In To Recovery.

Factors Facilitating Recovery: Gaining a Positive Identity: People with serious substance use problems lose a lot of the roles or personal characteristics that help define their normal identity (e.g. loving son, athlete, generosity); their relationships wither and their isolation increases.

The Stolen Generations: An introduction to the Australian government policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families—in order to help ‘make’ them ‘white’—and its impact on individuals, families and communities.

The Regulation and Control of Drugs: Ideological, political and economic interests have played a major role in the development of laws targeting people who use psychoactive drugs.

Bill White’s Norman E. Zinberg Memorial Lecture, 2012: Ten film clips of leading addiction recovery advocate’s talk given at Harvard Addiction Conference covers a range of themes and issues.

A Parent’s Story: A talk given at a Families in Focus conference in Wales in 2003 which helped me start to understand the problems faced by parents of a person with a substance use problem.

Background Briefings: I add five more of my Background Briefings, originally written for the UK magazine Drink and Drugs News in 2004-8.

The Harms and Risks of Substance Use
Reflections on the harms and risk factors related to drugs, alcohol and solvents.

The Drug Experience and Beyond: Amphetamine
The experience of taking amphetamine, including the subjective pleasurable experiences of initial use, amphetamine-induced anxiety and psychosis, and withdrawal symptoms following long-term use.

The Normalisation of Recreational Drug Use, Part 1
British youth culture and the role of drugs and alcohol among adolescents during the 1990s.

The Normalisation of Recreational Drug Use, Part 2
Continues to look at British youth culture and the role of drugs and alcohol among adolescents during the 1990s.

Hidden Heroin Users
Research at the end of the 1990s that illustrates the life experiences of a group of young heroin users, and offers a practice and policy framework for intervening in their drug journeys to social exclusion.

Healing: latest posts intergenerational trauma and the healing of this trauma.

Youth Suicide & Self-harm: Indigenous Voices, Part 1: Looks at a seminal report that brings together the voices of Elders and community leaders from across affected communities in Australia who wish to speak publicly about the causes and solutions needed to address this issue.

Youth Suicide & Self-harm: Indigenous Voices, Part 2: ‘Culture has become life-giving medicine for our people, closing the wounds of the past and standing us strong to face the future. Our Elders have been fundamental in this process. They are our wisdom keepers.’

The photograph used in this blog post was by Erik Fudala and has come from Unsplash, a great resource of free high resolution photographs.