Dr. David McCartney of Lothians and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme (LEAP)

Dr. David McCartney of Lothians and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme (LEAP) talks to David Clark about the development of his drinking problem whilst working as a GP in an inner-city practice in Scotland. He describes an unsuccessful attempt at sobriety, which involved a medical approach focused on prescribing. In crisis, he later called the Sick Doctors Trust Helpline and was told a doctor’s personal recovery story. That telephone call gave him hope and the opportunity to take his own journey to recovery. David talks about setting up LEAP and about facilitating recovery in the community. [15 films, 76 mins 11 secs]

Inspired by Natalie’s Story

Two years ago, I was interviewed by Huseyin Djemil for the Towards Recovery Journeys Podcast. Towards Recovery is a recovery community in Henley-on-Thames that Huseyin founded back in 2012. I edited this interview into 12 film clips and last week I posted them into the Recovery Voices section of this website. Here is one of the edited films which relates to Natalie, the young lady I first met back in 2000 and who inspired me to start writing stories about recovery.

David describes meeting ‘Natalie’, a former heroin addict, in his early days of working in the field. He reads a section of her Story that is posted on the his Recovery Stories website.

‘There were about fifteen people in my first group session, one of whom was an ex-heroin user who had been clean for about 16 years. She came over to talk to me and I was in awe. She had done exactly what I was doing and she had gotten through it. From that moment on, I didn’t feel so alone. She had done exactly what I was doing and she had gotten through it. It was a Light Bulb Moment.’

Read More ➔

Dr. David McCartney’s Recovery Voices Teaser

I am thrilled to release the first of our Recovery Voices Teasers, that of Dr. David McCartney, the Founder of Lothians and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme (LEAP).

I have known David since around 2007 and we continued to meet every time I was in Edinburgh, where my eldest daughter Annalie was doing her medical training in the early days. I loved visiting LEAP and spending time with the patients and staff. It was so good to be there last year, after a number of years away.

I edited my interview with David into a series of 15 films (totalling 76 minutes) which are posted on YouTube. These films cover the development of David’s drinking problem and an unsuccessful attempt at sobriety, the latter involving a medical approach focused on prescribing.

In crisis, he later called the Sick Doctors Trust Helpline and was told a doctor’s personal recovery story. That telephone call gave him hope and the opportunity to take his own journey to recovery. David talks about setting up LEAP and about facilitating recovery in the community.

Read More ➔

‘Hope in Addiction: Understanding and Helping Those Caught in Its Grip’ by Andy Partington

Andy Partington’s new book, Hope in Addiction: Understanding and Helping Those Caught in Its Grip, is well worth a read. Here are two endorsements I wrote for the book, a long and a short one.

‘Addiction to drugs and alcohol, and to various activities such as gambling, has increased markedly in recent times. These addictions have not only wrecked the lives of individuals, but have also impacted negatively on entire families and even whole communities.

Andy Partington’s insightful and thought-provoking book takes us on a journey of discovery into how we can help people overcome addiction, and also reduce the incidence of addiction. In helping us to understand the nature of addiction and recovery from addiction.

Andy introduces us to moving personal stories of hope and leading research findings that educate and inspire. He describes features of modern life that nourish mass addiction, particularly in modern Western capitalist society—past and present adversities, including childhood traumas (neglect, abuse and household dysfunction); social disconnection; feelings of emptiness, loneliness and dissatisfaction; and a sense of hopelessness and despair about what the future holds.

Read More ➔

Recovery, Connection & Hope: Dr. David McCartney

I’ve deliberately broken my ‘blog break’ to announce the second of our Recovery Voices, Dr. David McCartney of LEAP (Lothians & Edinburgh Abstinence Programme). I’ve known David since 2007 when I first started to drop in at LEAP when visiting my daughter Annalie, who was a medical student in Edinburgh. David and his team and patients always inspired me. I loved my visits, the last of which was in September last year.

In my Zoom interview with him, David talked about the development of his drinking problem whilst working as a GP in an inner-city practice in Scotland. He described an unsuccessful attempt at sobriety, which involved a medical approach focused on prescribing. In crisis, he later called the Sick Doctors Trust Helpline and was told a doctor’s personal recovery story. That telephone call gave him hope and the opportunity to take his own journey to recovery. David talked about setting up LEAP and about facilitating recovery in the community.

I am thrilled to have this collaboration with David. I’ve always hoped that one day we would be able to do some serious recovery advocacy together. I hope there will be more! I have edited our discussion into 15 short films, totalling just over 76 minutes. Above is one of my favourites from that collection. Please check out the other films. And why not subscribe to our YouTube channel?

Read More ➔

Bill White’s Writings

Researcher, historian, practitioner and recovery advocate William (Bill) L White has been the most prolific writer in the addiction recovery field. You only have to look at his website. The impact of his ideas, work and writings has been enormous. Here, I include links to a number of my blog posts that focus on Bill White’s writings.

Read More ➔

Factors That Facilitate Addiction Recovery

Recovery is something done by the person with the substance use problem, not by a treatment practitioner or anyone else. Whilst there are a multitude of pathways to recovery, there are a number of key factors that facilitate recovery from serious substance use problems. (9,586 words) *

Read More ➔

Factors that Facilitate Recovery (Short Version, 2013)

The importance of these factors has been demonstrated by listening to the narratives of recovering people about their journeys into and out of addiction (1,116 words). *

Read More ➔

A Rendezvous With Hope: Bill White

Here’s one of my favourite posts from that prolific blogger William (Bill) White, addiction recovery advocate, writer, researcher and historian. Bill’s complete writings are now being hosted on a website run by Chestnut Health Systems in the US.

‘Through my early tenure in the addictions field, the question of readiness for treatment and recovery was thought to be a pain quotient.  We then believed that people didn’t enter recovery until they had “hit bottom.”  If a person did not show evidence of such pain-induced readiness, they were often refused admission to treatment. Then we recognized that the reason it took people so long to “hit bottom” was that they were protected from the painful consequences of their alcohol and other drug use by people we called “enablers.”  We then set about teaching enablers to stop rescuing and protecting their beloved but addicted family members. 

Vern Johnson then came along and convinced us we could raise the bottom through a process he called intervention.  Staging such interventions within families and the workplace was something of a revolution that brought large numbers of culturally empowered people into recovery, including a former First Lady. All of these early philosophies and technologies relied on pain as a catalyst of addiction recovery, and that was the view I brought to my work as an evaluator of an innovative network of women’s treatment programs in the 1980s called Project SAFE.

Read More ➔

My Journey: 4. Learning About Addiction Treatment – WGCADA Stories

Three stories from the treatment agency West Glamorgan Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (WGCADA) in Swansea describe a medical student’s experiences during a day with community support worker Dave Watkins; a client’s experiences whilst interacting with Arrest Referral worker Becky Hancock, and a client’s experiences in the Primary treatment programme at WGCADA. (4,644 words)


In the previous part of My Journey, I described some of what I learnt through a small group of practitioners (some of whom were in recovery) at the treatment agency WGCADA in Swansea. During my time at WGCADA, my colleagues and I wrote a number of stories, three of which I include here.

1. ’A Day in the Life of Dave’ by Annalie Clark

The first story is written by my daughter Annalie, after she finished her first year of medical training at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a volunteer for Wired In over a period of the summer. One of her projects involved following around WGCADA Community Support Worker Dave Watkins.

Read More ➔

What facilitates recovery from mental health problems?: Scottish Recovery Network

It is important to note the close similarity in the nature of elements that underlie recovery from serious substance use problems and recovery from mental health problems. 

An excellent 2007 paper published by the Scottish Recovery Network by Wendy Brown and Niki Kandirikirira, entitled Recovering Mental Health in Scotland: Report on Narrative Investigation of Mental Health Recovery, provides important insights into the latter. This research involved the recovery narratives of 64 individuals in Scotland who identified themselves as being in recovery or recovered from a long-term mental health problems. Here is what the authors write in the Executive Summary of the Report (NB. That I have broken up one long paragraph for ease of reading online]:

‘Across the stories consistent internal and external elements could be found. For a recovery journey to begin and continue to prosper, narrators accounts of their experiences suggest that six basic internal (individual and self controlled) elements were required (though not necessarily in this order and not necessarily seen in every case):

Read More ➔

Natalie’s Recovery Story: ‘I Didn’t Plan To Be An Addict’

Treatment staff and her peers help Natalie find a path to recovery from heroin addiction. A confronting situation years later, when she is a treatment practitioner, helps Natalie realise that she is still traumatised from her childhood experiences. A second recovery journey begins. (10,923 words)

Read More ➔

Adam’s Recovery Story: ‘A Moment of Clarity’

After spending years in Australia locked into an addiction to amphetamine, cannabis and alcohol, Adam’s recovery leads him to the UK where he marries. His life spirals out of control after traumatic experiences, before he continues on his recovery journey and moves back to the other side of the world. (11,648 words)

Read More ➔

Factors That Facilitate Addiction Recovery

Describes the nature of addiction recovery and the factors that facilitate the process, using the Stories and quotes from our Storytellers and research conducted by members of the Wired In team. (12,698 words)

Read More ➔

A Genesis of Hope: Dr. David McCartney

I hold Dr. David McCartney in my highest regard. He not only overcame his serious alcohol problem, but also set up Lothians and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme (LEAP), a programme that offers structured treatment based in the community using a blend of evidence-based interventions. The patient group in treatment operates as a therapeutic community. I used to love visiting LEAP in my Wired In days, interacting with staff and patients as described in my last blog post.

David is very knowledgeable about addiction and recovery, and posts content to the Recovery Review blog, as part of a community of recovery-oriented experts who write about recovery and related matters. In April 2021, he appeared in a podcast about his addiction and recovery.

‘Switching from doctor to patient was not an easy transition for me. My first attempt at recovery was medically assisted, but only got me so far. What I needed was something more profound: hope, healing and connection to other recovering people. In this podcast for the National Wellbeing Hub, Dr Claire Fyvie interviews me about my own experience of addiction and recovery – warts, wonder and all.’

Read More ➔

Factors Facilitating Addiction Recovery

In my last blog post, The Nature of Addiction Recovery, I finished by saying that I would describe the key factors that facilitate recovery from addiction in today’s blog post. In fact, I’m going to summarise these factors and provide links to my relevant blog posts of 2022 which provide much more detail. The descriptions linked to have come from a chapter of my eBook Our Recovery Stories: Journeys from Drug and Alcohol Addiction.

Hope: This hope is based on a sense that life can hold more for one than it currently does, and it inspires a desire and motivation to improve one’s lot in life and pursue recovery.

Empowerment: To move forward, recovering people need to have a sense of their own capability, their own power.

Self-Responsibility: Setting one’s own goals and pathways, taking one’s own risks, and learning one’s own lessons are essential parts of a recovery journey.

A Sense of Belonging: People recovering from addiction need to feel the acceptance, care and love of other people, and to be considered a person of value and worth.

(Gaining) Recovery Capital: Recovery capital is the quantity and quality of internal and external resources that one can bring to bear on the initiation and maintenance of recovery.

Read More ➔

‘Healing is in Our Stories’ by Deron Drumm RIP

Here’s an excellent article by the late Deron Drumm about the importance of Stories in helping people recover and change the mental health system which appeared on Mad in America. I first posted this article on this website in December 2014.

‘”It’s important that we share our experiences with other people. Your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else. When you tell your story, you free yourself and give other people permission to acknowledge their own story.” Iyanla Vanzant

I have spent a lot of time talking to politicians, media members and those working in the mental health system about the failings of the current method of viewing and treating emotional distress. I have come to the conversations armed with stats and outcomes about the bio-medical paradigm. I have found that the people I speak with do not doubt the facts conveyed. They seem to agree that the current state of affairs is not good. The difference is that I think the tragic outcomes demonstrate the failure of the current system. The folks I talk to tend to think things are so bad because “mental illness is just that serious.”

Read More ➔

‘Peer recovery support: a bridge to hope and healing’ by Dr. David McCartney

I’ve just been reading another excellent post from Dr. David McCartney on the Recovery Review blog.

Good human relationships and social connections are potent protections against both physical and mental ill health. In an analysis [1] involving hundreds of thousands of people researchers looked to see to what extent social relationships influenced the risk of death. They found that those who had stronger relationships were 50% less likely to die early. Loneliness and social isolation have significant negative impacts. You want to live a long and healthy life? Get loads of friends.

In the same way, being connected to pro-recovery social networks improve outcomes in addiction treatment. For a variety of reasons, not least because of stigma, those suffering from substance use disorders are often relatively socially isolated. Guidelines consistently recommend connections to peer groups like mutual aid and LEROs [Lived Experience Recovery Organisations], though this has historically not been a priority for some services. For recovery from alcohol use disorders, being part of mutual aid has an impact at least as great as evidenced psychological therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy. [2]

Read More ➔

‘None of them will ever get better’ by Dr David McCartney

I love Dr David McCartney’s blogs. He writes so well about issues that really matter. He’s also a great guy who cares passionately about addiction recovery and recovering people. And he’s someone I always enjoy visiting when I am in the UK. [Can’t wait until the next visit!] Anyway, here’s David’s latest post on the Recovery Review blog.

Therapeutic nihilism

“None of them will ever get better”, the addiction doctor said to me of her patients, “As soon as you accept that, this job gets easier.”

This caution was given to me in a packed MAT (medication assisted treatment) clinic during my visit to a different city from the one I work in now. This was many years ago and I was attempting to get an understanding of how their services worked. I don’t know exactly what was going on for that doctor, but it wasn’t good. (I surmise burnout, systemic issues, lack of resources and little experience of seeing recovery happen).

Read More ➔

‘A Personal Story’ by Kerrie

This very moving Story was written for our Wired In To Recovery website in August 2011. I published it on Recovery Stories in August 2013.

‘Hi, my name is Kerrie. I am 37 years old. Both my parents died as a result of heroin addiction. My mum when I was 8 years old and she was 28, and my dad when I was 15 and he was 43.

I grew up in the madness of their addiction; needless to say we were a very dysfunctional family. I don’t remember my parents ever getting any real support. The only people involved with our family were the police and social services.

I learnt at a very young age to tell them nothing, as I knew if I told someone, for instance, that my sister and I had been left alone or had not eaten properly for a few days, that my parents would get in trouble. And I was fiercely loyal and very protective of them.

Read More ➔