Carrying the Message: James Deakin

In Monday’s blog post, I described how James Deakin, Founder of North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC), was incredibly intimidated by academics at one time. He got over that and today he is working with a number of us academics—in my case, a former academic.

James believes that both people with lived experience, and academics, have a role to play in the recovery field. For individuals on their recovery journey, storytelling is more relevant, but academic research is needed to influence funders and drive policy change.

James says that the upside of people with lived experience is that they are able to support people much more effectively, compassionately, and in a quicker manner. The downside of it is that ‘we’re also an ex-bunch of addicts and alcoholics, and it’s really easy to discount what we say, and what we think, and what we stand for, and what we advocate.’

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Stigma, Addiction and Recovery

Here is the section ‘Overcoming Stigma’ in my article Factors That Facilitate Addiction Recovery on this website. I have followed it with links to various of my blog posts relating to other people’s work on stigma which I have featured on this website. I hope you find this content of interest and help.

‘Stigma can be defined as social disapproval of personal characteristics, actions or beliefs that go against the cultural norm. It can occur at a variety of levels in society, i.e. individuals, groups, organisations and systems. A person can be labelled by their problem (e.g. addiction to drugs and/or alcohol) and they are no longer seen as an individual, but as part of a stereotyped group, e.g. a ‘junkie’, ‘alkie’, etc. Negative attitudes and beliefs toward this group create prejudice which leads to negative actions and discrimination.

For example, people addicted to heroin are often considered to be carriers of hepatitis C and other blood-borne viruses, thieves who rob old ladies of their handbags, and dirty, weak-willed junkies who will never get over their problems.

‘Once a junkie, always a junkie’ is a saying I’ve even heard in discussions amongst drug treatment agency workers. Our Wired In research has not only shown the strong prejudice that exists towards heroin users, but also towards recovering heroin addicts.

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The Four Walls: Mark Ragins

Here’s another great blog from one of my favourite psychiatrists, Mark Ragins of The Village fame. I first posted this article that Mark wrote on Recovery Stories back in October 2013.  Mark wrote the original article in 1998. [NB. I have broken up some of the original paragraphs to make it easier to read online.]

‘In 1989, the California State Legislature authorized the funding for three model mental health programs, including the Village Integrated Service Agency in Long Beach, in part to answer the question, “Does anything work?”

We created a radical departure from traditional mental health services basing our entire system on psychosocial rehabilitation principles, quality of life outcomes and community integration. Arguably, we have created the most comprehensive, integrated and effective recovery based mental health program anywhere.

In recent years, encouraged by our success, both our attention and the legislature’s have turned to the further question of “How can our whole system be more like the Village?” Undoubtedly, there are numerous serious beaurocratic, funding, and system design issues relevant to that question, but I would like to focus on the personal issues staff must face.

I believe that basing mental health services on recovery is the paradigm shift that can finally make the dream of deinstitutionalization a reality.

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Reflections of Beth Burgess

A series of blogs from recovery coach Beth Burgess of Smyls. Beth has written articles about addiction recovery for the Huffington Post which means she has had a large audience.

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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) *

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Bill White on Stigma and the Recovery Advocacy Movement

Here is a powerful 2014 film clip on the Faces & Voices of Recovery Vimeo channel from leading addiction recovery advocate Bill White about stigma and how we can tackle the problem.

‘Almost everyone in America know someone in recovery. The problem historically is that they did not know they were in recovery which means that they can continue to maintain incredible stereotypes about who are the people who develop alcohol and other drug problems in this country and who are the people who recover and don’t recover.

There are a lot of issues about stigma that I cannot educate you out of. I can give you all the facts. I can read all the books to you. I can show you documentaries but nothing is going to change that embedded prejudice until you encounter personally someone in recovery who means something to you and hear their story.’

William (Bill) White is Emeritus Senior Research Consultant, Chestnut Health Systems. He has served as a volunteer consultant to Faces & Voices of Recovery since its founding. He has a Master’s degree in Addiction Studies and has worked in the addictions field since 1969. He has authored or coauthored more than 350 articles and monographs and fifteen books including Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America and Let’s Go Make Some History: Chronicles of the New Addiction Recovery Advocacy Movement. Check out an online library of his writings at williamwhitepapers.com. Faces & Voices of Recovery, 2014. [5’44”]

Ellie’s Recovery Story, ‘Come With Me’: I Am Not Anonymous

Ellie’s Recovery Story is from the excellent I Am Not Anonymous website, Kate King and Tom Goris. This website contains over 170 Recovery Stories… no you haven’t read wrong! A simply amazing piece of work. Congrats to Kate and Tom and all the contributors. [NB. It looks like the website may have been last updated in 2015 – and the introductory film did not work for me – but the Stories are as relevant today as they were then.

‘When I was drinking, my life was ruled by shame.  It’s exhausting, living a double life. On the outside I was a put-together, active, intelligent woman.  I made sure my outside always looked okay, so nobody would look too closely at what was really going on, at my dirty secret.

Inside, I was a crumbling mess.  I felt less-than, unworthy and insecure.  I strove for perfection in all things, which of course is unattainable, and this left me feeling empty and ashamed.

I drank to fill the cracks, the emptiness.  I drank to numb out, escape.  I drank to feel okay with myself.  I found myself in my late thirties, a shell of a person, hollow and feeling desperately alone, even though I had a beautiful family, a job, and people who loved me.

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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):

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It Takes a Village to Recover From Drug Addiction: Charlotte Colman (TEDxGhent)

“Once an addict, always an addict”? Most addicted drug users do recover, but it takes time. We know that recovery results from an interplay between individual and social factors such as personal motivation or meeting the (wo)man of your dreams. But that’s not enough. After all, there’s a huge difference between wanting to change and having the opportunity to change. That’s why we should focus more on social connectedness and the role of the community in successful recovery. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organised by a local community. 2019. [14’35”]

Beth’s Recovery Story: ‘Becoming Beth’

A fullly-fledged dependent drinker by age nineteen, Beth has gone on to become a recovery coach and writer in order to help other people escape from addiction. (9,230 words)

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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)

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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.

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‘Why the empty seats at the free public health lunch?’ by Dr. David McCartney

When I worked in the addiction field in the UK in the first decade of this millennium, I was surprised how few treatment practitioners encouraged their ‘clients’ to access Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA) and other mutual aid groups. This fact was all the more puzzling in that the treatment services that were having the most success in helping people overcome substance use problems always strongly encouraged the people  who were seeking help to access mutual aid groups.

Here’s an excellent blog post on Recovery Review from one of my favourite bloggers, Dr David McCartney of Lothians and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme LEAP), about this issue:

‘A few years back in my first few months of working full time in addictions, I attended a seminar on mutual aid. Facilitated by an addiction psychiatrist, the meeting was packed with a variety of addiction treatment professionals.

The facilitator laid out the evidence base for mutual aid as it was at the time and discussed how assertively referring to mutual aid organisations could result in high take-up rates with benefits to patients. This was in the days when most groups were 12-step – SMART and other groups were still to be launched locally.

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‘Wiping Out Stigma’ by David McCartney

Here’s another excellent post from one of my favourite bloggers, David McCartney from Edinburgh in Scotland. It’s on a topic which is close to my heart—tackling stigma. Here is what David wrote on the Recovery Review blog recently.

‘Reducing the stigma associated with addiction – the word itself now tagged with a degree of stigma – is a priority in drugs policy. Stigmatising attitudes contribute to drug harms and deaths through delaying access to treatment, leaving treatment early and increased risk-taking behaviour.

Brea Perry and her colleagues at Indiana University took a look [1] at the scale of the problem of stigma for non-medical prescription opioid use and dependence in a representative sample of over a thousand adults in the USA.

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‘Women: Drinking and Recovery’ by Dr David McCartney

My good friend Michael Scott, of Michael’s Recovery Story, and I attended a Public Awareness Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in a Perth suburb today. I was asked to talk for five minutes about my recovery work over the years. I also described some of the factors that facilitate recovery.

We listened to a number of AA members share their stories and I have to say that I was blown away by the high quality of the shares. They were moving, inspirational and insightful. More women than men spoke. It was such a good meeting and I really enjoyed talking to people after the actual meeting ended.

Imagine my surprise when I got home to find that my good friend Dr David McCartney had just uploaded a blog post about women, drinking and recovery.

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‘A Journey Toward Recovery: From the Inside Out’ by Dale Walsh

I’ve been away visiting family this weekend and haven’t had a chance to prepare a new set of blog posts for this week. I therefore thought I would re-post some of my old favourites from the past this week, which will give me time to prepare new ones for next week. 

One of my favourite articles about recovery was written by Dale Walsh back in 1996 which really summed up what recovery and recovery principles mean to a person who has been suffering from mental health problems. I thought I would highlight some of the main points here. 

The Problem
‘For many years I believed in a traditional medical model. I had a disease. I was sick. I was told I was mentally ill, that I should learn to cope with my anxiety, my depression, my pain, and my panic. I never told anyone about the voices, but they were there, too. I was told I should change my expectations of myself and realize I would always have to live a very restricted life.

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Voices of Loved Ones Indirectly Affected by Substance Use Problems

Continuing to look back at my career in the addiction recovery field and what I have learnt. After reading the excellent book Beating the Dragon: The Recovery from Dependent Drug Use by James McIntosh and Neil McKeganey in 2003, I made the decision to start a research programme involving qualitative analysis of interviews. The first piece of research, which focused on the effects of substance use problems on the family, was conducted by Gemma Salter, a third year undergraduate. Gemma was awarded the prize for the project of the year in my Psychology department.

Gemma’s research involved semi-structured interviews (lasting 42 – 129 minutes) with nine parents and one grandparent (who had assumed the role of parent) of people with a drug and/or alcohol problem. The participants were recruited from West Glamorgan Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (WGCADA) in Swansea and Drug and Alcohol Family Support (DAFS) in Blaenau Gwent, South Wales.

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Factors Facilitating Recovery: Overcoming Stigma

This is eighth post in this particular Series, which comes from my book Our Recovery Stories: Journeys from Drug and Alcohol AddictionIt ties in nicely with a previous blog, Nothing to mourn; just a drug addict, by Dr David McCartney.

Stigma can be defined as social disapproval of personal characteristics, actions or beliefs that go against the cultural norm. It can occur at a variety of levels in society, i.e. individuals, groups, organisations and systems. A person can be labelled by their problem (e.g. addiction to drugs and/or alcohol) and they are no longer seen as an individual, but as part of a stereotyped group, e.g. a junkie, alkie, etc. Negative attitudes and beliefs toward this group create prejudice which leads to negative actions and discrimination. 

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A Parent’s Story

I met Mike Blanche in around 2003 and he was the first person to help me understand the impact of a person’s substance use problem on family members. Mike was an inspiring figure who had played a key role in the setting up of Drug and Alcohol Family Support (DAFS) in Blaenau Gwent in South Wales. He organised a conference, Families in Focus, at which the following talk was given. We first posted this talk on our SubstanceMisuse website back in 2003.

‘Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I am a mother and I have been invited here today to talk about my experiences as a service user. I have a son who is living at home with my husband and myself. He is addicted to drugs.

He first started dabbling with substances when he was still in school. At first it was ‘glue sniffing’, but it wasn’t long before he started experimenting with cannabis. When I tried to approach him to warn him of the dangers of drug abuse, his typical reaction was to say, ‘Don’t worry Mam, I can handle it.’

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‘Nothing to mourn; just a drug addict’ by Dr David McCartney

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.

David ran Lothians and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme (LEAP), a programme that offered structured treatment based in the community using a blend of evidence-based interventions. The patient group in treatment operated as a therapeutic community. David was in recovery himself. I loved visiting LEAP every time I was in Edinburgh, and meeting the patients and staff. I’d sit in on group sessions and spend time talking to the patients. David and I became good friends and I hold him in the highest regard.

I’ve recently been checking out David’s blog on Recovery Review. He writes so well and covers a number of key themes relating to addiction recovery. Here is David’s latest post, ‘Nothing to mourn; just a drug addict’, focused on the issue of stigma.

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