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Wired In envisions a community that enables individuals to access the tools they need to support their own Recovery and the Recovery of others. Wired In envisions a safe and welcoming environment where knowledge and experience, celebration and loss, lessons learned and mistakes made can be shared openly.
Stephen Bamber and I had some email discussions earlier this year about the need for a forum for discussion of research that was broadly around the subject of recovery.
Following much discussion and email activity, the first Recovery Academy met in Manchester over two days on the 29th and 30th of June. What was originally planned as a small research group interested in looking at recovery research activity in the UK blossomed – via word of mouth only – into an event with around 90 applicants to attend.
As the numbers grew so did the diversity of backgrounds and experiences, and we were delighted that the event came together into two days of discussion and debate characterised by openness, energy, enthusiasm and a willingness to listen and engage with other perspectives and experiences.
The range of topics was extremely broad – from whether ‘discovery’ was a better term than ‘recovery’, to what recovery treatment systems would look like. However, there was some real consensus – that there were many recovery-related topics that needed discussion and that a recovery academy was the right kind of forum for doing this.
While both Stephen and I were delighted with how things went, this is not about us and the future of the academy will be down to the work we undertake and the impact it can have.
We have generated a basic ‘mission statement’ that reads:
“The Recovery Academy is a coalition of interested individuals and organisations committed to evidencing the effectiveness of recovery from addiction and mapping personal growth and transformation in individuals and communities. Our aim is to map recovery activity across the UK and to develop a body of knowledge that charts recovery success. This will be done through an open and participative process that will reflect the warmth, humility and strength of those in recovery, and that will aim to provide the foundations for a science that is based on the art of recovery.”
What we now want to do is to throw open to a much wider audience the question of what we do now.
The first activity will be around generating networks of people willing to work together and to communicate on these huge issues that are so important to all of those who attended. For that we need views and thoughts and discussion.
But we also need to know who is interested in joining the recovery networks whether they are about research or practice, commissioning or policy, about personal experiences and deeply held beliefs.
Please let us know what you think of this idea and what role, if any, you would like to have in it. I can be contacted here or at david.best@uws.ac.uk.
First, can I say thank you very much to all of you who have replied to me and i really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions – i will get back to them all in the next few days.
However, i had a meeting with a medical student who i am supervising from Birmingham and she has some fascinating data that i want to share with you.
Her study tried to recruit people in alcohol recovery (abstinent) for at least one year – she recruited 53 who were split between those 1 – 5 years in recovery and those more than 5 years in recovery.
Those in longer, ‘stable’ recovery reported more self-esteem and self-efficacy and a better quality of life. So much may not be a surprise. The longer recovery group also reported more housing and relationship stability.
But here is the fascinating bit – the long term recovery group reported better ‘social relations’ quality of life – than the norm. In other words, people in long-term alcohol recovery had better social relations than the normal population.
For me, this is really exciting and I am encouraging her to submit this to a journal. This is because it confirms my suspicion that when we try to help people, we should not say that recovery will take away your symptoms but that it might make you happier than you were – even before you started drinking!
Let me know your thoughts
David
in my attempt to find out if there are any possible friends out there, I have managed to add myself only to my list. This makes me look very sad. This may reflect reality!
I feel a bit of a fraud being in the practitioners section – and maybe David would consider having a separate bit for researchers and academics.
I think one of the things that is frustrating when you get involved in recovery communities is how much good work is going on that not only has no evidence base but leaves the majority of our treatment system entirely oblivious.
There are some fabulous things going on in Scotland – I went to a recovery conversation cafe last month in Glasgow and there are all kinds of exciting groups, but they are not very well coordinated and the sense of what works, even informally, is not very well thought through – and definitely not publicised.
So what am I doing? I am currently doing recovery studies in Glasgow and Birmingham that are about getting people in recovery to tell their stories and I am also developing questionnaires to measure recovery capital and to assess workers’ attitudes on recovery in mainstream services.
But I still feel that i am working in isolation on this.
So I am delighted to see that Stephen Bamber has joined the site – as he and I have been exchanging lots of messages about this question on email. We are trying to think of ways of creating a knowledge directory of what is going on around recovery – does anyone have any thoughts about this?
This is my first blogging attempt so I apologise that I am using it to whine – but it is probably what my main strength is!
