I just wanted to remind you about our YouTube channel, which is now called Recovery Voices, rather than Recovery Stories which it was originally called.
This YouTube channel is a core part of a Recovery Voices project, which I have recently developed in close collaboration with Wulf Livingston of North Wales. The project involves interviewing people on Zoom who are recovering, or have recovered, from addiction, as well as their allies.
The aims of Recovery Voices are to: (1) celebrate the lives and achievements of people recovering from drug and alcohol addiction; (2) create a powerful voice of recovering people and their allies; (3) help develop a greater understanding of addiction and recovery; (4) enhance our understanding of factors that can lead to addictive behaviours; (5) challenge the stigma that is attached to people who experience substance use problems and those who are trying to overcome such problems; and (6) facilitate the development of peer-led recovery communities.
Wulf Livingston is a Professor of Alcohol Studies at Glyndwr University in Wrexham, and a qualified social worker. We first met back in 2000 when I was leading the national evaluation of the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Fund projects in Wales. I loved getting together with Wulf and discussing the field whenever I was visiting services in North Wales. We started talking again about two years ago and I visited Wulf and his wife Melanie in Snowdonia in September last year. We started to plot and eventually decided that we should work together on a project. So began Recovery Voices.
The first two Recovery Voices on our channel are Huseyin Djemil of Towards Recovery and Dr. David McCartney of Lothians and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme (LEAP), both of whom I interviewed. Next Monday, we will post the interview between Wulf and James Deakin, Founder of the North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC). I am now editing an interview Wulf had with Dr. Wendy Dossett, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Chester in the UK. A number of other people have agreed to be interviewed by Wulf and I.
We have yet to decide whether we will build a new section of this website for the Recovery Voices project, or develop a new stand-alone website. We hope you find our Recovery Voices project stimulating and informative. Please tell your friends about the project and pass on our YouTube link.
