About the Founder of the Addiction Recovery Place

For 25 years, I had the privilege of working in the care sector in the UK, starting as a student volunteer working with adults with learning difficulties and progressing to work in criminal justice, an industry that I had always wanted to work in since I was a 13-year-old.

In 2004, I worked in one of the UK’s busiest Magistrates courts in Croydon, South London, where substance use was prevalent with the crack cocaine epidemic that had been sadly developing nationwide. In the UK, there was a brief change in policy where addiction was at the grassroots of being accepted as a health issue and not a criminal issue. Croydon was one of the first courts in the UK that introduced drug courts as an experiment to the criminal justice system, which was first used in the United States, and I was asked to work in the court. From here, I began working in the new Drugs Intervention Program in the cells of London and Kent’s very busy Police Stations, where I assessed people who had been arrested for drugs and alcohol-related offenses. From there, I would case manage and refer them to appropriate community services or prison drug programs. I was also given the opportunity to do some training about drug awareness for police officers at the stations where I was working, including new recruits who had just entered the service. Quite a daunting task, but something that I will always be very proud of because I know that I changed some officers’ views of people who offended to support their drug use, and they accepted that treatment was the right thing for not just the user, but also to the community as a whole.

I managed a day program for people with drug rehabilitation orders from the courts. We referred people to onsite prescribing of Methadone and Suboxone. 

I was also proud to have contributed to The Needles Focus Group, which was formed to identify the most effective way of limiting and disposing of unsafely discarded intravenous needles. We successfully worked with other community groups and the local government to add safe Sharps containers in select public restrooms. This was the first initiative of its kind in public places in UK. Read about this project here.

In addition to running the Addiction Recovery Place, my wife and I also run a OfficeHounds Social Media Marketing Agency for Addiction Treatment Centers.