Development of a strong online presence was one of my key aims with Wired In (initially known as WIRED). With the help of website developer Ash Whitney, I launched Daily Dose, a drugs and alcohol news portal, in early 2001. This website was followed by substancemisuse.net—which contained sections for people suffering from substance use problems, practitioners, and members of the general public—and the news portal Drugs in Sport. We later built wiredinitiative.com, which focused on the range of work that Wired In was conducting. (1,036 words)
I’ve often been asked why I came up with the name WIRED, the original name for Wired In. I could say that it was because I wanted to connect people, which I now consider the main ‘power’ of the name Wired In. In fact, the reason was that I initially saw WIRED as a way of providing people with information about drug and alcohol use problems, and how they could be overcome. WIRED was quite simply an acronym: Web-based Information REsource on Drugs—alcohol is, of course, a drug.
I had initially received funding from the Welsh Development Agency, which at the time was the economic development agency for Wales, to develop and maintain an online resource that would help people in Wales better understand the nature of drug and alcohol use problems and how they could be overcome. Use of illegal drugs, in particular heroin, and excessive drinking were major problems in parts of Wales, particularly in areas suffering economic and social problems such as in the Welsh valleys. These problems had increased as coal mines in the valleys closed.
In a previous blog post in this series, I described how Claire Brown of Drink and Drugs News (DDN) commissioned me to write articles for the magazine that she and Ian Ralph had launched. Here is an article I wrote on WIRED (later called Wired In) that was published in that very 
After leaving 
