After a two-year absence due to the pandemic, the Recovery Games is back and taking place at Hatfield Activity Centre in Doncaster, DN7 6EQ on Saturday 24 September 2022.
The all-day event is a key attraction in the recovery calendar, bringing together people from all walks of life from across the UK to celebrate the achievements of people in recovery from a drug and alcohol dependency.
The Recovery Games attracts hundreds of people, who have lived experience or who work in the drug and alcohol field, competing in a day of fun-packed healthy gladiator style games and obstacle courses on the ground and in the water.
Entry is free and the action takes place between 10am and 4.30pm. The public is welcome to come along, watch the games, join the spectacular festival of colour and have a go on the many activities.
Neil Firbank, Aspire Senior Group Work Practitioner, said, ‘The Recovery Games showcase that recovery does happen with the right support. Those taking part are on their own journey of recovery and once a year, they join in and have fun with others who are also experiencing the recovery process.’
Stuart Green, Aspire Service Manager, added, ‘This is a real opportunity for communities to connect and build important relationships both at this event and with peers in their teams.’
Tim Young, Chief Executive from the Alcohol and Drug Service, also commented, ‘Registrations will open shortly for teams of people from within the recovery community with lived experience or who work, volunteer or mentor in the drug and alcohol area. Once again, we hope that local people will come along and show their support and cheer on the teams.’
For the latest updates and to register a team, follow the Recovery Games on Twitter @Recovery_Games or search facebook @recoverygames.
The Recovery Games is organised by Aspire Drug and Alcohol Service, which is run by Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with registered charity The Alcohol and Drug Service.
The Recovery Games is made possible by fundraising and donations. If you would like to support the games, please follow the games on Twitter and search facebook.
DDN magazine is a free publication self-funded through advertising.
We are proud to work in partnership with many of the leading charities and treatment providers in the sector.
This content was created by Aspire
Over one hundred films have been entered into the festival competition and these entries have been watched by well over one million people to date. The idea has always been to give people with lived experience a platform to share their stories of hope and recovery with the public, in community hubs, classrooms, conferences, urban spaces, and just about any other place you can fit a screen and some willing viewers.
The event served a dual purpose of celebrating ten years of service to the community and recognising the staff working for Synergy, some from its inception in 2012. 
Read it in 
The campaign events continue to demonstrate the incredible ingenuity and creativity of this sector. Over the years, we’ve seen art displays, music concerts, demonstrations and processions, street performances, political workshops, press conferences, webinars, radio shows, and so much more. In June 2022, the campaign partners organised media events in Nigeria, community events in Canada, harm reduction workshops in Colombia, rallies and speeches in Morocco, naloxone training in Ireland, film screenings in Australia, community outreach in Portugal, street performances in Zimbabwe, and the list goes on. Here in the UK, the powerful Anyone’s Child network held a lobby event outside Parliament calling for reform of our own drug laws.
Challenging stigma about drugs, alcohol and any kind of addiction has become part of life for all of us. We’ve seen how it affects us, our families and friends, and people we work with. But being bombarded by stereotypes each day in the media can make the task feel overwhelming, as stigmatising words and images have become the norm and part of everyday communication.
The training is just one part of Change Grow Lives wider harm reduction strategy that also encompasses the micro elimination of Hepatitis C, increasing access to structured treatment, enhanced outreach work, continued focus on optimised dosing and improving the coverage and quality of needle and syringe programmes. 
Cocaine manufacture grew by more than 10 per cent between 2019 and 2020 to more than 1,900 tons, according to 
Records from Ireland’s National Drug Treatment Reporting System (NDTRS) show that almost 11,000 cases were treated for problem drug use last year – the database records treatment episodes rather than people, which means the same person could be counted more than once if they had more than one treatment episode in a year, HRB points out. Two out of five cases were new to treatment, with almost a third seeking treatment for cocaine. ‘In 2021, for the first time, the NDTRS recorded more cocaine (3,248) than heroin (3,168) cases among those treated for drugs as a main problem,’ says the agency.
‘We are observing a sustained increase in cocaine treatment year-on-year,’ said HRB senior researcher, Dr Suzi Lyons. ‘In 2019 we saw cocaine overtake cannabis as the main problem drug; this year the numbers reported as seeking treatment for cocaine exceed those for heroin – which may mark a tipping point in Irish addiction trends.’ The fact that almost two-thirds were mixing cocaine with other drugs was also a concern as ‘mixing drugs can impact recovery and increase risk of overdose,’ she added. However, there had been ‘some positive developments as regards risk behaviour, with the proportion of cases that had ever injected drugs decreasing from around one-third in 2015 to just over one-fifth in 2021. The reduction is even more notable for new cases, and in 2021 only 4 per cent reported ever injecting compared to 15 per cent in 2015.’
The rise in ‘copycat’ ecstasy was caused by lack of demand as a result of COVID lockdowns and compounded by Brexit-related supply chain issues, 
The study, by the University of Sheffield, Australia’s University of Newcastle and Figure 8 Consultancy Services employed a ‘large programme of mixed-methods research’ to examine patterns of alcohol purchasing and consumption among people drinking at harmful levels, including those dependent on alcohol and people engaged with treatment services. It also studied the impact on other key groups, such as family members and people living in remote or rural areas. The research included interviews with people presenting for treatment, harmful drinkers in the community, treatment providers, family members, carers and others. Data for the study were gathered both before and after implementation of MUP in 2018, and in Northern England as well as Scotland to enable comparisons to be made.
After leaving their job in hospitality due to the pandemic, Tiggy decided to volunteer with Humankind after an online employability quiz suggested they’d be suited to a career in a caring role.
I was in treatment at Derbyshire Recovery Partnership when my key worker first introduced me to Recovery through Nature (RtN), run by Phoenix Futures. I connected with the programme straight away – I thought it was a brilliant opportunity not only to connect with nature but also to people with similar experiences as me in a safe environment. After two years of being on the programme, I finished treatment and became a volunteer. This was just as the country went into the first lockdown, but fortunately I was able to keep volunteering as the gardens still needed to be maintained. I’m not sure what I would have done without RtN at this time.
We’ve been awarded the Investing in Volunteers standard, which shows the value we place on volunteering. However, it’s also a celebration of the volunteer experience at Change Grow Live.
When it comes to recovery, people have long argued over what it really means – how would he define it? ‘It’s different for everyone and I wouldn’t try to prescribe my own routes to anyone else, but I think you’ve got to have a balance of abstinence and harm reduction. I think it’s got to be understanding this is an illness, and trying to provide the right support to the person so that it’s person-centred.’
Emergency call handlers need better training around dealing with overdose situations, according to a new report from the Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF). Some call handlers have been giving advice that conflicts with that provided in naloxone training, says 
This lack of women in senior roles has meant that the opinions and experiences of women have often not been heard during decision-making discussions and this, combined with very little gender-specific research, has led to the needs of women not being considered in the design of services. For example, it’s a lot more difficult to pick up a script every day or attend a group session if the pharmacy is on the other side of town, you don’t have access to a car and you have two children in tow.
From the start, we’ve tried to come at the problem from a different angle than other cross-organisational meetings (which in themselves are a fairly rare occurrence). We are a time-limited group – we’ve collaborated to build a shared understanding of the problem, and we recognise that focussing on women’s issues are a small fragment of our day jobs. We are forgiving, kind and unafraid. We’ve tried hard to come together with a different perspective. We don’t come to the meetings as representatives of our organisations, or to tell each other how brilliant our organisation is. We come together as women. We share jokes and have developed a space for psychological safety. It’s given us an opportunity to be bolder and to focus more on the needs of women – something we’ve all wondered if we could have done more of in our day jobs, or, as in my case, across my career.
Turning Point had developed a substance use and mental health (SUMH) toolkit for professionals, condensing research and guidelines from PHE, NICE and elsewhere, she said. The organisation had also been working in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland on developing an integrated team, with a pilot launching during the COVID period following an audit of more than 3,000 clients. This had identified two significant groups where there were gaps in accessing treatment – populations involved in injecting drug use who were ‘frequent flyers’ at local hospitals and also presented with high levels of risk around mental health, including self-harm and suicide, and longer-term clients who, although there was little risk of self-harm or suicide, were in high levels of distress and unable to make changes in their substance use as a result.
Oasis’ approach includes delivery of treatment in a women-only building, providing a physically and emotionally safe place for women to access support in an environment which recognises the prevalence of trauma and actively seeks to prevent re-traumatisation and promote recovery. Women report feeling more comfortable in a setting they know is women-only, sharing space with peers and drawing on shared connections, without risk of being in groups and settings with a partner, or ex-partner.
Case studies
Taking Control
Release are UK experts on drugs and drug laws and provide advice and advocacy. A non-government and non-profit organisation, they campaign for drug policies that respect
