‘Shouting recovery from the rooftops’ by Beth Burgess

Shouting recovery from the rooftopsI remember Beth Burgess joining the Wired In To Recovery community in November 2011. She certainly shouted from the rooftops and it was great. Here is Beth’s first blog and some comments she received. These comments refer to the prejudice that recovering people feel and fear.

‘I have had enough. Enough of saying to people with a half-smile, “Er…yeah, I don’t really drink…any more.” “A health kick?” “Yeah, something like that.” I have had enough of putting ‘career break’ on my CV. I am fed up of insinuating rather than being honest.

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Learning from Wired In To Recovery

2007_0118walpole0115Wired In To Recovery (WITR) ran for over four years between 2008 and 2012, attracting over 4,000 community members. A key element of this online recovery community was blogging, providing the opportunity for people from all walks of life to describe their experiences and express this views. The site comprised over 7,500 blogs (from 1,000 bloggers) and 35,000 comments.  

When I was developing WITR, I rationalised that by providing people with the opportunity for people to blog, I would accumulate a wealth of information about the lived experience of addiction and recovery, the needs of recovering people, personal views about the care system, etc.

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It’s not just about the drug

IMG_3429Why not check out my article on drug, set and setting? In this article, I describe how the effects of a drug depend on the interaction between the drug, the person (set) and the social context (setting) in which the drug is taken.

Similarly, these three factors influence both addiction and recovery from addiction. As I describe, this interaction has important implications for developing systems of care to help people recover from dug and alcohol addiction.

Please let me know what you think about It’s not just about the drug.