Biography

I was born and brought up in North London. After Grammar School and ‘A’ levels I hit depression, the mental health system and psychiatric medication. As counselling was not available, internalised stigma became my biggest barrier to moving on. There followed many years of addiction to benzodiazepines until in 1987, I took myself off using the techniques I describe on Safe ‘Benzo’ Withdrawal. Self-management and recovery techniques became the focus of my life. Many of the recovery techniques I learned whilst in withdrawal, have now become a way of life.

I went on to train in Co-Counselling, Focusing and Meditation techniques whilst exploring complementary medicine and spirituality. I qualified in Swedish Massage and, more recently, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). I write and have had articles published in a national women’s magazine and a National Poetry Anthology. For the past six years I have worked for a small mental health charity in Devon. Soon to be made redundant, I am most proud of the Devon Spiritual Emergence Network (DSEN) that I initiated with the support of Catherine Lucas, Clare Coutts and Andrew Barkla. It uniquely offers service users the opportunity to explore their spirituality as part of their recovery. Affiliated to the national Spiritual Crisis Network, DSEN, is growing in membership and offers choice to those in recovery.

My vision is for safe, supportive residential accommodation available, maybe short term, for people in withdrawal. It would, ideally, be a non – clinical environment and offering a range of therapeutic and complementary interventions such as art/crafts, music making, gardening, massage, counselling, acupuncture etc. These ‘recovery centres’ might be jointly funded via the NHS and Corporate Social Responsibility funds of large pharmaceutical companies.

Let's make sure others don’t have to go through what we did. Each person has a unique opportunity to make his or her contribution. Mine is this CD. George Bernard Shaw wrote that the purpose of life was not to ‘find oneself’ but to ‘invent oneself’. Those of us who experienced a difficult benzodiazepine withdrawal know what it is to re-invent ourselves. Recovery, for me, was like a rebirth. I’ve learned that’s its not what happens to you in life that’s important, but how you choose to find meaning in it.