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Madness of our Drug and Alcohol Policy and Interventions. WARNING: CONTROVERSIAL OPINION. Today was a reckoning for me. A reminder of the insanity of addiction and the folly that is our current treatment ethos. Harm reduction. Today, I was privileged to observe, for an hour or so, the operation of an established community based drug and alcohol treatment project, employing around 50 staff, and providing services to 100s of clients, Based in a typical northern town that migh

We talk a lot about trauma these days and rightly so. Talking therapies help many people make sense of what happened to them. They bring insight, language and understanding. But here's the part that often gets missed. Understanding trauma is not the same as releasing it. Trauma doesn't just live in the mind. It lives in the body Every cell in your body carries memory. Not memory as a story you can explain, but memory as tension, sensation, reflex and habit. When survival is i

I have lived with my head bowed, as I have witnessed your derision of your worth. It causes me pain to see you allow this within your being. Stand tall and straight and be not a light under a bushel but a beacon. Are you afraid to shine on others? This is your job this time, to be an example, not an instrument of their ways. Let not your light be dimmed by others' darkness. Let not their fears and prejudices be your guide. If you want to look at the light, look at yourself, t

There's a belief that people only change when they 'hit rock bottom'. The big crash. The dramatic collapse. The moment everything finally snaps. But real life rarely gives you a clean, cinematic collapse. Most people don't fall off a cliff they hang on with their fingertips slowly loosening their grip one finger at a time. They quietly wear themselves down, repeating the same patterns, hoping for a different result. And one day they realise: this isn't working . That moment-t