RECOVERY MONTH...RECOVERY MONTH...
12 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| October 2015
GETTING STRONGER
With more recovery events taking
place than ever before, UKRF founder
Alistair Sinclair looks at why UK
recovery month is going from
strength to strength
ON 1 SEPTEMBER 2013, around 100 folk climbed
Snowdon to mark the beginning of the first UK
recovery month. While recovery month has been
celebrated in the US for many years, and the UK
recovery walks started with a memorial walk in
Liverpool in 2009, 2013 was the first year we saw a
range of recovery activities all over the UK in
September. There were 49 events in 2013, and 2014
saw 102. This year, we’re aware of 166.
Recovery month 2015 kicked off in Manchester at
the seventh national UKRF event, where around 250
UK activists gathered to explore the role of
recoverists in an ‘age of dislocation’. Thousands of
people made recovery visible at recovery walks,
around 26 of them across the UK – including walks in
Dublin, Glasgow and Durham.
Other communities held family fun days, music
festivals, dance events, film nights, harm reduction
cafés, plays, sports events, workshops and unity days.
One recoverist, Lexi West, set off to climb to Everest
Base Camp to raise funds for recovery communities
and plant flags for the fallen.
The variety of events in recovery month and the
passion behind them was incredible and inspiring. It
was a month dedicated to community building and
hope. The UKRF believes we all need a month like
this – highlighting our similarities as human beings,
the core values that connect us and the belief that
we can, all of us, recover.
WALK THIS WAY
The UK recovery walk has just
completed its seventh year on the trot.
Its founder AnnemarieWard talks
about how it’s kept up momentum
THIS YEAR, the annual UK recovery walk was held in
Durham, writing another chapter in the history of
addiction recovery in the UK. At the recovery,
spirituality and families conference in Durham
Cathedral the day before the walk, and during the
walk itself on Saturday 12 September, we went some
Throughout September, thousands of people across the UK got
together to celebrate recovery – with fund-raisers, festivals and
plenty of fun.
DDN
gets a glimpse of some of the action.
RecoveRy Round-up
