Behind the Pages with Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD

December 2, 2014 by

“The vast majority of drug abuse is associated with earlier trauma. It’s very rare to see somebody who becomes a drug addict who not also has a history of abuse and neglect.” Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD

Behind The Pages host Diane Goshgarian interviews author Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD about his new book The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Interview recorded at 22-CityView Cambridge on October 08, 2014.

As I said last week, this book is essential reading if you are working in the mental health and addiction fields.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

‘An interview with Greg Williams – The Anonymous People’ by Veronica Valli

March 6, 2014 by

20956_610039903223_6779801_n-1-300x280Greg Williams and The Anonymous People are in the news a lot recently which is great. Exactly what we want. Here’s a new interview from Veronica Valli.

‘If you are in the recovery community then you would have heard of the movie The Anonymous People. A ground breaking movie that highlights the need for more advocacy and more access to treatment for addicts and alcoholics.

Many of the participants of the movie have been interviewed for my Recovery Rocks series: Emmy award winning actress and NYT best selling author Kristen Johnston, former NBA basketball player Chris Herron, Recovery advocate and media commentator Joe Schrank.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

‘Unraveling the Mystery of Personal and Family Recovery: An Interview with Stephanie Brown, PhD’ by Bill White (Part 3)

January 7, 2014 by

Unknown-4‘Bill White: In 1999, you published a book with Virginia Lewis that virtually transformed my own understanding about family recovery from alcoholism. Could you share with our readers how the book came to be written and some of its major conclusions?

Stephanie Brown: The book came at the end of a ten-year research project that Virginia and I undertook in 1990 to study the process of recovery for the family. I had always wanted to know what happens to the whole family when the drinking of one or both parents stops.

We asked the same main question I had asked previously: is the process of recovery for the family similar to the process for the individual, and do the stages of active addiction and recovery I identified for the individual hold true for the family? We discovered pretty quickly that these stages do hold true and that they are a good guideline for understanding what happens with recovery growth following abstinence.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

‘Unraveling the Mystery of Personal and Family Recovery: An Interview with Stephanie Brown, PhD’ by Bill White (Part 2)

January 3, 2014 by

UnknownStephanie Brown has written an excellent book on personal recovery, from which I have used some key sections in my blogs. She emphasises a number of paradoxes in recovery which are described here. There’s some powerful stuff below, which I had never really thought about until I read Stephanie’s work.

‘Bill White: Speaking of impact, you wrote a book called A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety and Radical Transformation that has deeply touched many people. Could you share some of what you infused into that book?

Stephanie Brown: At the time I wrote A Place Called Self, I was deepening my understanding of paradox. Hazelden asked me to explore some of these paradoxes from the perspective of recovering women, although much of what I eventually wrote also applies to men.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Your Recovered Life Series with Greg Williams, Filmmaker

January 1, 2014 by

I really like the look of Courtney Webster’s new website, where she is interviewing inspiring people in recovery. First up for us is Greg Williams, who made the film The Anonymous People. Here’s part of what Courtney has to say about this interview:

‘Last spring I was minding my own business on Facebook when I happened upon a kickstarter video that rocked my world.

Greg Williams, was talking about a film he was making called The Anonymous People (see description below). I sat at my kitchen table with my little boy on my lap and was riveted. By the time my husband had come over to see what was making me so excited, I was crying the best kind of tears. It was so inspiring.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Addicted Brain: Interview with Marc Lewis

August 21, 2013 by

4033340-4x3-340x255Here’s a fascinating interview with Marc Lewis as part of the ABC Radio Big Ideas series here in Australia. Well worth putting your feet up and listening – or have it running in the background.

‘Marc Lewis took every drug imaginable over a 15 year period. He knows drugs can make you feel good, and he experienced the desperate lows of addiction. He’s been drug free for 30 years and is now a neuroscientist.

So what do the drugs he took actually do to your brain?  Why do they make you feel the way they do? And – crucially – how is the brain responsible for addiction? He speaks to Paul Barclay.’

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

‘Sharing our Experience, Strength and Hope, With our Friends Across the Pond’ by Phil and Sandy Valentine

July 11, 2013 by

phil-valentineI was looking through my blogs on Wired In To Recovery and came across one focusing on Phil and Sandy Valentine’s trip to the UK in late 2011. Thought I’d provide a link to the original source material on the CCAR website, an interview of this lovely couple by Bill White.

There are a lot of interesting points in this interview, but here are just a few as a taster.

Phil Valentine: Where recovery is concerned, anonymity and stigma still reign. People in recovery have worked in the treatment system for years, and their colleagues and co-workers (never mind the “service users”) don’t know they are in recovery. Personal recovery seems to be a taboo subject. And countrywide denial, particularly with alcoholism, prevails.

Read More ➔

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,