Recovery Pathways Overview

Twelve Steps, SMART, Refuge, Dharma, and more

Cultural Considerations

Recovery in different communities and cultures

The Meeting After the Meeting

The most important conversation in recovery often happens in the car park, the coffee shop, or the walk to the bus stop after a meeting has ended. Inside the meeting, there are formats and traditions and time limits. Outside the meeting, there is the unstructured, messy, real business of human connection. It is in these […]

Why Connection Is the Opposite of Addiction

Johann Hari popularised the phrase, but the idea has deeper roots: addiction thrives in isolation, and recovery lives in connection. The neuroscience supports this. Human connection triggers oxytocin release, which modulates the dopamine system — the same system hijacked by addictive substances. Genuine social bonds provide natural reward that, over time, can begin to repair […]

HALT: The Simple Check That Prevents Relapse

Before you pick up, stop and ask yourself: am I Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired? It sounds almost insultingly simple. You are battling a life-threatening illness, and someone suggests you might just need a sandwich. But there is a reason HALT has survived decades of recovery wisdom: it works. The physiology is straightforward. Hunger drops […]

The Power of “Yet”

Three letters can change everything in recovery thinking. Not “I cannot do this” but “I cannot do this yet.” The difference is enormous. “I cannot imagine my life without cocaine” is a statement of permanent defeat. “I cannot imagine my life without cocaine yet” is a statement of current limitation with implied future possibility. Growth […]

Part 4: Building Recovery Capital in 2026

Recovery capital is the sum total of resources — internal and external — that a person can draw on to initiate and sustain recovery. It includes physical health, mental health, relationships, housing, employment, education, community connections, and a sense of purpose. The more recovery capital you have, the more resilient your recovery becomes. Building recovery […]

Part 3: Young People and New Substances

Generation Z faces a substance landscape that is almost unrecognisable from even ten years ago. Novel psychoactive substances appear faster than they can be classified. Vaping has normalised nicotine use among people who would never have smoked cigarettes. Ketamine has moved from veterinary medicine to weekend essential. And the boundary between recreational use and clinical […]

Part 2: Recovery in the Gig Economy

The traditional advice for early recovery assumes a traditional life: a nine-to-five job, a fixed schedule, weekday evenings free for meetings. For the growing number of people working in the gig economy — zero-hours contracts, freelance work, shift patterns that change weekly — this advice is not just unhelpful, it is irrelevant. How do you […]

Digital Dealers and Online Triggers

The dark web has transformed the drug trade in ways that would astonish anyone who remembers the days of meeting a dealer on a street corner. Today, substances arrive in plain packaging through the letterbox. Reviews and ratings guide purchases. Customer service exists. It is Amazon for addiction, and it operates with a terrifying efficiency. […]