Addicts Working with Addicts Show Empathy
Glenn is a THOMAS Graduate
The last time I appeared in Edges was two years ago. I was in the treatment centre. I had been in addiction for 26 years and I had hit rock-bottom. It was an abstinence community with a 12 Steps programme. I spent six months there and moved into the THOMAS second stage. I received help from the THOMAS Floating Support unit with getting into education and I started working on myself.
There I started learning life-skills such as paying bills and taking responsibility for myself. There they really pushed me and the support workers gave me a lot of help. They saw the potential in me. I got involved with the Service User Network where a lot of the THOMAS clients are involved and I got on the committee there. I took on a few roles with the committee and went to college to do a DANOS course which is about drug misuse which will help me to become a drug practitioner.
Over the last two years I have discovered that I am quite a good person. There is nothing during that time that I have put my mind to and not achieved. And I am still living. I like what I am turning into and I am still learning. The 12 Step Programme is about learning and living a day at a time. I can live with that and I have learned that I can be quite responsible. I am maintaining a house, a job and I feel that drugs are quite a long way away from me now. But I have to still keep working on it. Life has turned out good for me.
Eighteen months ago I volunteered to do work at the THOMAS Academy in Blackpool. I started doing groups and since then things have progressed. Doing group work at the Blackpool Academy has made me realise how hard it is working with addicts. I have also learned that working in a team environment is challenging but I think I fit in quite well. But again it is about taking responsibility.
Working in a group dynamic with Blackpool and also in the rehab at Witton Bank, I do life skills, motivation, 12 Steps, anger management and behavioural therapy. I enjoy these groups even though they are challenging. I have learned lots of things at Blackpool Academy one of them is confidentiality, also risk assessments which I also learned about at College, but I can have first hand experience of at Blackpool.
Addicts who are working with addicts can have empathy because they have been there, this does not take anything away from the staff working with addicts at the THOMAS Projects because they do understand but ex-addicts can take it to a higher level of understanding, a text-book is different than experience. You can’t learn about the disease-concept you have got to live it. It’s the therapeutic value of one addict helping another and THOMAS has a lot of this because of the number of them coming through the programme who are now working for the Organisation. I can see that working.