Staff featured in this video (in order of appearance)
· Dr Cosmo Duff Gordon, Founder and Service Director
- Dougie Dudgeon, Team Leader and Counsellor
- Richard Coltart, Outpatient Programme Unit Head
- Dan Stanley, Team Leader and Counsellor
- Sarah Hodgson, Recovery Assistant
- Timmy Williams, Recovery Assistant
Dr Cosmo Duff Gordon
My name is Dr Cosmo Duff-Gordon. I’m a chartered psychologist. I’m an addictions treatment specialist. I’ve been working in the addiction treatment field since 2005. I founded the Start2Stop Outpatient Programme in 2010 and I founded the Mews House, Start2Stop’s Residential Secondary in South Kensington in 2012.
Dougie Dudgeon
Start2Stop Mews House is a residential facility that offers daycare treatment in tandem. Residents that stay here are on the daycare programme, but we also offer that daycare programme to non-residents. These are people that may be returning from extended treatments elsewhere. They’re coming back into London. Perhaps they need to reintegrate with family, with work, with life, with those kinds of things.
Start2Stop also offer an Intensive Outpatient Programme, which we colloquially call the Evening Programme.
Dr Cosmo Duff Gordon
I founded the Start2Stop outpatient Evening Programme which is the programme designed for functioning, binge-pattern addicts and alcoholics who are probably living at home and have jobs. It’s a 14-week programme and is an ideal way to getting well and getting recovery while living at home and going to work.
Richard Coltart
But it’s around giving them some scaffold to come back into life with a support framework around them, but also have a safe, confidential supporting space in which to talk about stuff that may feel difficult, particularly around the consequences of any addictive behaviour.
Dr Cosmo Duff Gordon
Residentially, we’re ideal for people who have had some sort of serious addiction problem, have almost certainly done at least 28 days of primary treatment, and are sort of up for recovery, if you like, aware that they’re going to need help scaffolding.
Our outpatient Evening Programme that I founded in 2010, that programme is ideal for functional binge pattern addicts. I think 92% of people who’ve ever done that programme had
binge pattern alcohol and cocaine, don’t have a physical dependency, have more or less an intact life, still have a job, still have a career, still have a family, albeit with dysfunction and problems because of the addiction. The Evening Programme is ideal for that sort of binge pattern client because they can live at home, carry on working and get recovery.
Dan Stanley
Primary is a wonderful thing it gets people out of crisis. It gets them out of a cycle of addiction that they unable to break by themselves. Primary gives that safe place to go and secondary backs that up really well because it gives them a safe landing.
Sometimes when they come out of primary it’s kind of a real shock to their system and that’s where the associations with all of their using, the old friends, the pubs, the bars, the clubs and that’s where we come in for secondary.
Dougie Dudgeon
We’re a 12-step based treatment centre, so we’re going to keep looking and reviewing people’s understanding of what they need to do just to stay sober.
You know, in each case, it’s about finding different ways of dealing with the feelings and different ways of coping. So much of using, not addiction, but using is based on managing feelings and managing thoughts. But if you take that away, there isn’t another coping strategy in place. It’s about replacing kind of maladaptive coping strategies with well adapted coping strategies.
Dr Cosmo Duff Gordon
You’re not hidden from the world, you’re in the world. And actually, it’s really important that secondary treatment happens where you live in your community. So, if you’re from London, it makes no sense to do secondary treatment in, say, Los Angeles. You should be doing it in London, because it’s in London that you can build the support systems.
Dan Stanley
What we’re trying to achieve with clients is we’re trying to help them understand their addiction, the impact that it’s had on them, the impact that it’s had on different areas of their lives, the impact that it’s had on their loved ones. And the deadly nature of it, where it can lead.
We’re trying to show them that it doesn’t need to be like that. That there’s another way to live, that they can be free, that they can go on to live wonderful lives. And that they can find hope and healing and freedom and connection.
Sarah Hodgson
This will be a journey that will transform your process, the rest of the path you follow in life for the absolute best. It will be one of the most rewarding experiences of your lifetime. For me, the gifts of recovery keep on coming every single day. I’m now just coming up to four years in my sober milestone and I, to this day, see changes that happen that are only down to the process that I’ve taken and those steps that I’ve taken. They might be small steps to start with but that’s absolutely fine. You don’t need to have it all in one day and I learnt that through being at Start2Stop.
I think it all seems really, really daunting to start with, but it is just taking it one that one day at a time and each day you will be guided and loved and supported through the process. You won’t be alone, and you will be surrounded with like-minded people all in the same stage of just wanting that liberating feeling that recovery can give you. There is hope and there is a loving kind future for you.
Timmy Williams
There is a lot of hope out there and if you are in the midst of active addiction, I would say that you should reach out. Find someone that you can be honest with about what’s going on, because that’s kind of where it always starts for me is about honesty about what’s going on.
If you would like to find out more about our London Outpatient and Residential Addictions Treatment and how Start 2 Stop can help then please get in touch here.