Drinking any amount of alcohol is harmful Alcohol is the leading attributable cause of death amongst the adult population ( between the ages of 15-49 ) and yet the message people have heard from doctors and the media has been that drinking a small amount of red wine may be good for your health. This […]

BBC World at One news programme has reported on poor and unsafe practice in the private rehab sector.

What can Psychology teach us?  A series of short articles about useful ideas from psychology. The Fundamental Attribution Error This is a psychological phenomenon coined by the Stanford Psychology professor Lee Ross based on a psychology experiment by Psychologists Jones and Harris (1967).

Robin Lefever’s Interview with Clare Kennedy, founder of Kennedy St & Co   For many of us in recovery, the idea of going out to a bar is a terrifying prospect. Will I be laughed at for ordering an orange juice? Will the shelves stacked with spirit bottles be too tempting to resist? But Brighton […]

We are delighted to hear that the organiser’s behind the Movember movement are turning their focus this year to men’s Mental Health. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29841063 It is our considerable experience that physical and mental health are not separate matters but two aspects of well-being and resilience that overlap and have a clear cause and effect relationship; […]

It has been impossible, today, to ignore the important findings of a recent Home Office report, which compared the UK’s approach to drug misuse with that of 13 other countries and concluded that there is no evidence that the criminalisation of drug use leads to a reduction in the problem. See, for example, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29824764. In […]

An experienced Recovery Coach from the States paid our Hay Farm clinic a visit and gave us an account of his observations that we are happy to share with you. We thank Dr. Ronald W. Hill for his kind and insightful thoughts. Recently I had the privilege and pleasure of visiting the PROMIS residential treatment […]

The liver is the master organ and the recycling centre of the body. Amongst its many jobs it is responsible for eliminating harmful toxins, breaking food down into energy, manufacturing and disposing of excess hormones, producing bile, fighting infections, balancing blood sugar and storing nutrients. If our liver is functioning less than optimally or is […]

‘Natural recovery’ is a term used to describe recovery from addiction without the help of professionals. It’s a term that rather implies there’s something unnatural about the professional or even AA route. However, other terms that have been used are also problematic, given that they all embody an explanation of the phenomenon that is open to question. For example, Tuchfield (1981) was one of the first to describe what he called “spontaneous recovery”, although the recovery his alcohol dependent respondents described were generally the product of a sense of shame that had grown over a long period of time, even if the ultimate decision was sudden.

A couple of weeks ago (16th August, on BBC3; “Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery”),  Russell Brand launched a hard-hitting attack on conventional approaches to drug addiction: first, he lambasted the view of right wing tabloid commentators who favour the view that addicts recklessly and freely abuse drugs, and could as easily choose differently. And […]