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Voices of recovery
almost family, and you don’t leave one of your own out there on the battlefield,
in the madness of addiction, to die. You go and get them and do everything you
can to get that warrior back into their recovery process.
*****
Our warrior down response teams
are driven by ethical governance as opposed
to clinical governance, and they work across geographical boundaries. We have
allies in Blackburn who have been utilising this approach for years, alongside
people from Liverpool. Our approach is made up of informal coalitions of work
colleagues, treatment professionals, friends and family members, as well as
those supporting family members like Loved Ones Unite and Al-anon, faith-
based group members and peers in recovery. They operate inside the recovery
system, but outside of the treatment system. They respond to anyone who is in
need, at any stage of their journey.
Many recovery slogans and clichés have become part of people’s lived reality.
People in recovery know that ‘you alone can do it, but you cannot do it alone’,
because they have tried it on their own and failed time and time again. They
know that ‘I can’t but we can’, they have been that addict or that alcoholic who
has sat on their own thinking about recovery while ordering two bags of brown
and one of white. Then there is the addict whose thinking turns to drinking:
‘I’ve never really had a problem with alcohol, it was just gear and crack – I’m
sure I’ll be OK having a drink.’ These experiences prove that an addict on their
own is indeed behind enemy lines – rhetoric soon becomes reality when you
realise that we really are in this together.
So last Christmas we mobilised a member of the warrior down team and
throughout the Christmas period this elder visited Rachel every day –
sometimes she would refuse to communicate, some days she didn’t even know
that the elder had called. A leaflet about TBRP was left at her home and contact
numbers put up on the kitchen notice board, and throughout this time our elder
simply made sure Rachel was as safe as she could be. Some days that involved a
call for an ambulance, and some days it was removing the alcohol that had
amassed in vast quantities around the house.
Slowly, the communication between these two addicts started, and by the new
year Rachel started to turn a corner and engage with a range of support services.
Today, Rachel is six months abstinent and learning about the mutual benefits of
one addict supporting another. She is contributing to her recovery community.
It’s not for us to speculate how Rachel’s Christmas, and more importantly her
life, would have been had the elder not intervened. All we can say is that
warrior down provides an opportunity for people at any stage of their journey.
In the last year or so, I personally have seen this support for ten people back
from the battle – from those who have never approached treatment services
and are in early recovery, to those who have had years of sobriety, to those who
now work in the field and have lost their way.
*****
Today, all are sober, happy and re-engaged with living
, and today I am sober,
happy and living a life beyond my wildest dreams. The family of the Calder
Valley gave me this over twenty years ago, so today I do my own service to the
warrior down team and hold out a hand to others who need help.
Recovery is owned by the individual and the community they belong to. Our
treatment system, as it is currently configured, cannot respond in this way. When
Phil Valentine spoke of warrior down he also illustrated that recovery communities
have existed for years and years, and treatment as we know it is relatively new. This
was a ‘light bulb moment’ for many who work in the field. For me, it illustrated the
limitations of our systems, reoriented the addict at the centre, and reminded us of
the power of kinship. So forget the battle of the rhetoric of treatment and recovery
and see beyond it, as the magic of ‘warrior down’ prevails.
For more on the warrior down program visit http://bit.ly/SDe14g
Michelle Foster is CEO of The Basement Recovery Project,
www.thebasementproject.org.uk; www.facebook.com/basementproject
IT’S BEENA BUSY FEWMONTHS.
AfterWeston’s
recovery walk on 22 September, where I talked
about our shared humanity and ‘messy’ love, I
walked in Brighton with over 3,000 people at
the fourth UK Recovery Walk and talked about
community strengths, family and the need to
build recovery networks grounded in the ‘five
ways to wellbeing’.
A few days later I attended a recovery
coaching conference in London and since then
I’ve delivered some training, written various
proposals and reports, helped facilitate UKRF
recovery seminars (the most recent involving
100 people in North Lincs) and continued to spend a lot of my time on trains.
Along the way I’ve participated in a ‘researching recovery’ seminar at
Manchester University, met with two of the chairs of the recovery
partnership to talk about plans for a recovery festival in London next spring,
agreed new UKRF work in Hertfordshire and London and taken part in
planning for next year’s national service user conference in Birmingham.
So, lots of activity and not a lot of personal recovery, because, while I’ve
been busy, I’ve become ill. My ‘black dog’ (Churchill’s term for his depression
– I quite like it) has recently, as it does from time to time, become much
larger and is nipping at my heels. Which has left me considering my ‘identity’
– or rather I’ve been thinking about the many ‘identities’ that combine, in all
their colourful combinations, to make up who I am at any given time.
At the recovery coaching conference one of the speakers talked about the
different identities we have; some of them out there in the open and some
hidden from the world, secret. This idea that the ‘addict’ (or the ‘depressive’)
is just one identity among many has left me thinking about ‘authenticity’
and the tensions that exist within the recovery movement.
Am I more ‘authentic’ because I have ‘issues’ with substances and a deep
personal acquaintance with a ‘black dog’? Does this qualify me to stand up
in front of people and talk about ‘wellbeing’ and ‘recovery-orientation’? Do I
have greater ‘value’ because I have given up illegal drugs? Is this integral to
my ‘recovery’? I still use legal drugs. I might take anti-depressants again.
Does this make my recovery less ‘authentic’? Where is my recovery? Do I
need to find a place where all my identities are valued and nurtured or do I
need to subscribe to some political/treatment version of recovery and be
‘cured’. Will ‘abstinence’ make everything alright?
Lots of questions, and answers remain elusive. But I think when I reach a
point where I can value myself and all my identities, when I can be at ease
withmyself, I’ll be onmy road to recovery. And when services start by valuing
each and every individual where they are now, recognising their strengths in
the ‘now’, and not where they would like them to be (payment for a result
determined by others) then we’ll be on the road to recovery-orientation.
I often sit in rooms where people introduce themselves as ‘in recovery’
and I say ‘I’m Alistair, I’m from the UKRF’. That’s me playing it safe. We all like
safe. Being a director of the UKRF is not the biggest part of my identity.
Recovery starts with honesty. I’m ‘recovering’ and, ‘ill’ or not, like everyone
else I have something to offer.
Alistair Sinclair is a director of the UK Recovery Foundation (UKRF)
VOICES OF RECOVERY
FINDING IDENTITY
Only when we start valuing each individual
where they are now, rather than where we
would like them to be, will we take the road
to recovery-orientation, says
Alistair Sinclair