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Recovery
November 2013 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 11
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
THE ‘
R
’WORD
MAYBE IT IS THE CIRCLES I OPERATE IN
, or those that
I gravitate towards, but when I mention the word
‘recovery’ there is good chance that low level groans
are emitted, and eyes will roll as the glint of defeat
replaces the sparkle of indifference. On the face of it,
this doesn’t make sense – surely recovery is a
positive thing, speaking of hope, lives saved and
purpose regained?
A commissioner said to me the other day, ‘If we
put the word recovery in enough strategic documents
and action plans, people are bound to get better
faster.’ You couldn’t accuse them of being serious but
it did wag a finger at the gap between theory and
practice. Visible recovery was brought to the front
because it was contagious. We all have success stories
in our treatment system; get them chanting ‘you can
do it too’ in our prescribing services and erm, well…
When I am exposed to discussions about
recovery communities I have much the same
reaction as when the devout knock at my front door
and ask if I am interested in salvation. Show me a
purple t-shirt and bright eyes and my soul will
implore you not to sing a bloody song. As WB Yeats
said, ‘the worst thing about some men is that when
they are not drunk, they are sober.’
Nonetheless, if there is evidence that lives are
being saved, that all this visible recovery is drawing
otherwise lost souls into a contagious leap forward,
then I really ought to stop my moaning and hop
aboard the bandwagon hurtling into a brighter
future.
So how would you measure the success of this
new(ish) push for recovery networks and
communities. Is it the number of people on a
recovery walk? Well… no! Is it the volume of cheers
when a recovery champion talks about their new
found hope…. no! Is it the number of people
engrossed in an asset mapping exercise… hmm. Is it
the number of residential rehab providers on a
parliamentary group insisting that they have an 80
per cent success rate… erm… definitely not!
There are parts of the country where it is well
known that ‘recovery communities are strong,
something we should replicate elsewhere’. I was
never really sold on this, but before the NTA was
subsumed into PHE, I did ask someone there what
the successful completion rates were like in these
areas – you know, how well are they delivering the
national drug strategy? In the immortal words of
Theresa May, ‘people should not use drugs, and if
they do they should stop.’
The response was along the lines of: there
doesn’t seem to be much of a link between strong
recovery communities and people coming off drugs,
well not so far, but we haven’t looked at the data
properly yet, and there will probably be a delay
between changing a treatment system and the data
coming through, etc etc.
Of course there is nothing wrong with celebrating
recovery; there is something uplifting in a group
‘hurrah’ and you can’t begrudge the warm fuzzy
feeling it gives to those in the huddle. But is it
attractive to the distrusting and marginalised, looking
at the clinch from outside? Not in my experience. For
many, there is something disturbing and unattractive
in trying to plaster optimism over the struggles of the
often disadvantaged, traumatised and neglected.
I am not alone in taking a step or two backwards
when exposed to excessive enthusiasm, a rallying
battle cry or a drive to push from the dark into the
light. As George Bernard Shaw said, ‘The fact that a
believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the
point than the fact that a drunken man is happier
than a sober one.’ I heard Anne Milton during her
brief stint as health minister talk about
commissioning miracles. You know she meant well,
but really.
The recovery agenda has right on its side: ‘You
don’t want the recovery we offer? Then I am not sure
you deserve our help.’ I work with many courageous,
determined, talented and resilient people who make
progress in spite of the national drug strategy and
recovery rhetoric, not because of it. A nice little
shaming prod, pointing out the lack of personal
ambition, doesn’t always help the self-esteem.
Those that fail to acknowledge the holy grail of
recovery are somehow guilty of colluding in the
problem instead of championing the solution. It is
worse than refusing to delight in how cute your
neighbour’s dog is, so I thought I should keep quiet.
The other day, however, I noted that someone at the
centre of national strategy – a champion of
recovery, with all national data at their disposal –
was after many years, trying to find a link between
recovery communities and successful completions. I
decided I ought to write something.
Alex Boyt works in central London as a service
user coordinator
‘When I am
exposed to
discussions
about recovery
communities I
have much the
same reaction as
when the devout
knock at my front
door and ask if I
am interested in
salvation...’
Alex Boyt
is having trouble climbing the
steps of the recovery bus