Interview With My Recovery Voices Colleague, Wulf Livingston

July 10, 2023 by

In an interview with my Recovery Voices colleague Wulf Livingston, he talks about his early hedonistic drug and alcohol use, life as a successful chef, and qualification as a social worker. He then worked with the drug and alcohol charity Lifeline, the drug treatment charity CAIS in North Wales, and the Probation Service.

Wulf later joined academia, eventually becoming Professor of Alcohol Studies at Glyndwr University in Wrexham. He believes what really makes a difference to people’s lives is what occurs beyond the addiction treatment phase.

I am enthralled by Wulf’s passion for social justice, his knowledge about what is needed to help more people recover from addiction, and his commitment to helping create positive societal change. The interview was edited into 16 short films, totally just under 80 minutes. Here is one of those films:

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My Journey: 2. Learning About Addiction Treatment – My WGCADA Experience, Part 1

February 27, 2023 by

I used to visit West Glamorgan Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (WGCADA) in Swansea in order to learn about addiction, recovery and treatment from treatment practitioners, and from people who have accessed the treatment service for help with their substance use problem. (1,306 words)

Dave Watkins (left), Community Support Worker at WGCADA.

Last week, I posted the first part of a serialisation of My Journey, my wide-ranging career in the field of addiction, mental health and trauma. This first part focused on my career in neuroscience, which lasted almost 20 years. In 2000, I closed my laboratory, as I did not think that neuroscience research was helping people overcome addiction.

Given that I did not feel that a biomedical approach and the use of drugs were the answer to helping people overcome drug addiction, what were the answers? And what methods were used in treatment services that were successful in helping people overcome substance use problems?

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Factors Facilitating Recovery: Empowerment

May 5, 2021 by

Following on from my post about Hope, I include another section, this time on Empowerment, from the second last chapter, ‘Factors That Facilitate Recovery’, of my recently published eBook, Our Recovery Stories: Journeys from Drug and Alcohol Addiction.

‘As emphasised throughout this book, recovery is something done by the person with the substance use problem, not by a treatment practitioner or other person. The major sources of power driving the recovery process are the person’s own efforts, energies, strengths, interests and hope. Treatment practitioners, and others involved in the person’s recovery journey, can facilitate the recovery process by encouraging and supporting the person’s own hopes, strengths, interests, energies and efforts.

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‘A Day With Dave’ by Annalie Clark

April 23, 2021 by

In my last post, I talked about Dave Watkins and his past role at the treatment agency West Glamorgan Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (WGCADA) in Swansea. Here’s an article that my oldest daughter Annalie wrote in 2005, after spending a day with Dave Watkins. Annalie had just finished her first year of medical training at the University of Edinburgh. She is now a psychiatrist.

What is striking about this article is that Dave’s role resembles what I envisage a recovery support worker (or recovery coach) would be doing today. Annalie highlights Dave’s extensive contacts within, and knowledge of, the local community, which helps the lives of the people with whom he works. In the video below, you can see one of the magic tricks that Dave used to engage the people with whom he was working.

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Learning About Addiction Treatment, Part 1

April 20, 2021 by

In my last blog posts, I described how after nearly 25 years as a neuroscientist I decided to close my research laboratory in the Department of Psychology at Swansea University at the start of the new millennium. I wanted to learn more about the nature of addiction and how people overcame their substance use problem.

I spent a good deal of time at a treatment agency in Swansea, talking with both practitioners and people who attended the agency for help with their problem. In addition, I was travelling around Wales visiting treatment agencies, in my capacity as lead on a two-year national evaluation of projects supported by the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Fund. This fund was created by the National Assembly for Wales, or Senedd Cymru (Welsh Parliament) as it is now known.

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