‘My drinking was out of control – but now I know I can recover’: Andrew

July 3, 2023

Here is an excellent article about recovery from addiction by Chris Clements, social affairs correspondent for BBC Scotland.

Andrew is in recovery after a decade of alcoholism.

Ten years ago, he suffered a mental breakdown and his drinking spiralled.

It led to the loss of a career in finance and the breakdown of family relationships.

But the 62-year-old told BBC Scotland that his darkest point came last year.

“In June, my partner died and my drinking just got totally out of control,” he said. “I couldn’t function as a human being. I had to be cared for.”

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‘Lessons from Rehab’: David McCartney

March 30, 2023

Here’s another excellent blog post by Dr. David McCartney on the Recovery Review blog.

In 2005, concerned at the lack of choice in addiction treatment in Scotland and hearing frustrations from patients and families around lack of access to residential treatment, I sought support and funding to set up a drug and alcohol rehab service based on the therapeutic community (TC) model. This would be unique in Scotland as, based in the NHS, it would be free at the point of delivery, eliminating difficult funding pathways.

I proposed the service should serve a local population to keep people close to their families and allow them to develop local recovery supports and access intensive aftercare. It should develop close working relationships with other treatment and support options – this should be an ‘as-well-as’ service rather than an ‘instead-of’ service. There should be direct family support and detox offered as part of the deal. We would actively connect people to recovery resources in the community, offer them peer support and open avenues into education, training and employability.

Outcomes from rehab in Scotland (and even the UK) at the time were hard to find – but so were any treatment outcomes from services already in operation, so I built in that we should commission a robust evaluation. If this wasn’t going to work, we needed to know that – and if it helped people achieve their goals we wanted to get that message (and any other learning) out there.

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Is Rehab Effective? The Results Are In: Dr. David McCartney

February 21, 2023

Here is another great blog post from Dr. David McCartney of Lothians & Edinburgh Abstinence Programme (LEAP) on the Recovery Review blog.

‘Recovery journeys are dynamic, take time and for those who receive treatment, may need several episodes. For some, residential rehab is part of the journey, just as harm reduction interventions can also be part of the journey. However, residential rehabilitation is a complex intervention and complex interventions are difficult to study.

In Scotland, the government is making rehab easier to access and growing the number of beds. This development is not without its critics. Some feel the resource needs to ‘follow the evidence’ – in other words into harm reduction and MAT interventions. This all-the-eggs-in-one-basket position would reinforce the rigid barriers that make rehab the domain of the wealthy or the lucky.

‘Follow the evidence’ in this context is a refrain that implies that there is no evidence that rehab works to help people achieve their goals and improve their quality of life. That is simply not true. Last month saw the publication of a literature review on residential rehab by Scottish Government researchers. It’s a thorough piece of work. This summary of the research evidence provides verification that “that residential rehabilitation is associated with improvements across a variety of outcomes relating to substance use, health and quality of life”.

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Factors Facilitating Recovery: (Gaining) Recovery Capital

June 15, 2021

Here’s the last of the 11 factors facilitating recovery that I wrote about in my book Our Recovery Stories: Journeys from Drug and Alcohol Addiction. Just because it is last, does not mean it is the least important factor. In fact, it is one of the most important!

Recovery is better predicted by someone’s assets and strengths, rather than their ‘pathologies’, deficits and weaknesses. People can make progress by identifying and building on their personal assets and strengths. Interventions to facilitate recovery must focus on helping individuals build their recovery strengths, more often referred to as ‘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 [1]. It takes three main forms:

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‘Recovery for the Health of It’ by Bill White

September 30, 2013

rsz_heatlh_imageThe threats to health that occur during active addiction have been widely communicated in the popular media and in the scientific literature, but the health profile of  people in long-term recovery from substance use disorders remains something of a mystery. 

While one might assume that physical and emotional health rapidly improves following recovery initiation and stabilization, a health survey of Philadelphia and surrounding counties just published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs reveals a more complex and ominous picture.

In 2010, the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services contracted with the Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC) to incorporate recovery-focused items into PHMC’s 2010 Southeastern Pennsylvania (SEPA) Household Health Survey of Philadelphia and four surrounding counties. 

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