Yesterday, I was going through old Recovery Stories blogs (from the period 2013/4) when I came across this gem. It’s a guest blog by a GP who gives a personal view on professional perspectives of mutual aid. No doubt, it is just as relevant today as it was then.
“‘Astonished’
I was astonished the first time I was taken to an NA meeting. I mean, really gobsmacked—you could have knocked me off my seat. The room was full of recovering heroin addicts; something I’d never seen in my 20 years (at that time) in practice.
I was both excited—at the possibilities—and ashamed at the fact that I didn’t know such places existed. It curls my toes to think of it now, but I had not referred my patients to them. That was a while back.
As part of our Wired In strategy, my colleagues and I launched the Wired In To Recovery online community in November 2008. Our initial aims with Wired In To Recovery were to:
In my third blog post focusing on what I learnt from the treatment agency BAC O’Connor back in 2004, I focus on two themes. Firstly, how staff deal with people who relapse during the treatment programme. Secondly, how the agency works with ‘clients’ to help them integrate (back) into their community.
This is eighth post in this particular Series, which comes from my book 
When I developed Wired In and worked in the addiction recovery field, I was living in South Wales. When my daughter Annalie was in medical school in Edinburgh, I used to fly up from Cardiff to visit her. I soon came to love Edinburgh. That positive feeling for the city increased greatly when I met Dr David McCartney.
