Your recovery stories


A Wild and Precious Life was a community project that started in a small classroom of people who wanted to find a way of expressing themselves through their recovery process, attending abstinence programmes and meetings with their key workers at Hackney Recovery Service. The class that Lily taught gave people a platform to explore their experience. 

We would love to hear your stories of recovery, whether you have had issues in the past, or continue to have issues, around addiction or problems with your mental health, or whether you are close to someone who has. Please share your stories here with us in celebration of giving voice to experience that might otherwise be buried or forgotten. 

Please write your experience in the comments box below. You can write it as a testimony or a short story, or just an episode in your life. You can write it as a poem, or a piece of fiction, or a piece of memoir. There are no rules. Those we are most moved by will be displayed alongside some other stories we have by some of our anthology writers, here. All Lives are Precious; Some Are Wild.

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  2. RECOVERY by Gary Bryan

    Recovery for many years meant dealing with my childhood trauma and recovery from dependence on drugs. One couldn't have happened without the other.

    Initially I had to physically recover from my open-heart surgery and near-death experience. Being told by doctors that I might actually die was terrifying and an important point in my journey towards lasting positive character change. I am not ready to die just yet!

    I had such low self-esteem as a young person. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety at about 16 and despite various medications, was offered no counselling. I had been a victim of sexual abuse at age 12 and my mental health careered off a cliff when my dad left us not long after. He then also rejected me for being gay when I came out at 14. I didn’t care if I lived or died, so I just drifted into raves and party drugs and eventually heroin. That moment though, when I was told by doctors that there was a very real risk I could actually die, it kick-started a journey of recovery that I am still on now. It was a turning point when I realised that actually I didn't want to die and that if I wanted to survive I would have to fight harder than I ever had before! - And I had already been fighting for a long time in a daily battle of poor mental health, poverty, homelessness and addiction to very powerful drugs. I was exhausted but defiant and refused to let this beat me.

    Recovery in these first months out of hospital meant getting through intense cravings and having to continue living in the area where I had used for 20 years, almost every corner holding a memory of picking up or using drugs. This was the toughest part!
    I got referred to St Mungo’s who were running classes and services for ex addicts. I got brave and pushed myself to attend a creative writing class there which is where I met Lily and Zoe and had my first opportunity to express in a creative way what I had been through.

    I had had two strokes as well as heart surgery and when I was discharged I was still being prescribed high doses of painkillers and Valium so my mind was pretty clouded. Initially my writing was raw and focused on the near-death experience, and then a lifetime’s worth of trauma started to flood out. I am an artist and musician anyway and consider myself quite creative. These classes were a lifeline at the time, a space where I could start to process my past. Nowadays I write music more than I write words!

    I was a homeless heroin addict at 17 and as a queer and disabled person the struggles were compounded. I was misunderstood and judged my entire life. I shouldn't have made it at all really!

    Three and a half years on and nearly four and half years drug free I can say that recovery means different things to me now. My life spun 180 degrees with my death scare. It was the catalyst which has led to some profound changes and shifts in character I had only ever dreamed of when I was still addicted to heroin. Despite the odds I have built myself a beautiful life. I am active in my local community and volunteer my time organising litter picks in our local park and doing online support for a refugee charity.

    Recovery nowadays looks like stability and planning for my future, both luxuries i had never really experienced before! The surgery and my past lifestyle have left me disabled. I have arthritis, a slipping disc and a chronic pain condition with chronic fatigue but at 41 I have never been happier with where my life is. I am a daily practising Buddhist and with my yoga practice, I have found myself returning to centre, to a more balanced and full life. I almost don’t have the vocabulary to describe the profound shift in thinking and character that have occurred over the last few years! I am now slowly becoming financially independent and I have lots of exciting creative projects and ideas on the go. Recovery for me is an ongoing process that requires a lot of nurturing and self care and will probably have no end point. We are all recovering from something though are we not?

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