TO the casual observer it’s just a group of people chatting over cups of tea in a slightly drab community hall. But for the men and women here at Forth Valley Recovery Community (FVRC) in Stirling, this Friday afternoon recovery cafe meeting is about finding a way of new way of living after struggling with debilitating drug addictions – often for decades.

At this makeshift cafe there is the type of talk most of us take for granted – what music people are listening to, films they’ve watched. But through these simple interactions there is trust forming, connections building, respect being renewed. Advice can be sought, judgement is off the table. Volunteers and workers have been there, done that.

Darren, who doesn’t want to use his last name, says it’s communities like this one that have helped him stay off the dangerous mix of alcohol, pain killers and opiates he was using to “help me cope with life” and learned that it’s connections with people and not material things that make him happy.

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At the next table is Becky Wood, now a paid recovery development worker, who attended this weekly cafe three years ago, 60 days sober after at least 10 years of problematic substance misuse and still “in a confused mess”.

She accepted the cups of tea, the words of support, but admits she wasn’t quite sure what she was doing there or how this might be connected to her recovery. As the weeks rolled by it became clear. “I totally understood – I felt the empathy and love and connection,” she explains.

Drug fellowship meetings were key for Wood, but again, they weren’t enough on their own. “I needed something on every day. I needed a safe space where people understood and there was mutual support.”

That need has arguably never been greater. So far this year there have been 11 drug-related deaths in Forth Valley. “That’s one a week,” says assistant recovery development worker Scott Ferguson. It’s been a hard week, he admits, the continued loss of life and grief hitting him hard.

“I lost my older brother in December,” he says. “He was 48 and it was addiction that got him. I couldn’t drag him into recovery – I couldn’t make him want it.” His youngest brother died 23 years ago, and he’s had his own close calls, almost going into cardiac arrest after an operation as a result of decades of drug and alcohol abuse that started when he was about 15.

Like so many in recovery, there came a turning point. “I was so broken and I was at the stage where I didn’t want to live, and I didn’t want to die.” Then came a support worker who involved him in his care plan, a spark that ignited a growing belief that another life was possible, and an encounter with a recovery cafe, also run by Forth Valley Recovery Community in Stirling’s Raploch estate.

“I walked in with my hands in my pocket, couldn’t look anyone in the eye, thought nobody there had been through what I had been through, like I had the biggest weight on my shoulders. But I started seeing recovering addicts meeting together like that, having a laugh, there was a real buzz and atmosphere about the place.” He felt understood. “It gave me hope.”

Hope for him is everything. “Hang on, pain ends,” he says. He wishes he could have found a way to help his brother do that. At his funeral they played Leave the Light on by Tom Walker – the lyrics wound around the difficulties of addiction. “In Scotland there are many lights on. They are there for them if they are contemplating change. If anyone has got an addiction problem, I’d urge them to reach for it, just reach for it.”

Now he hopes plans to create new networks that can help those lights of lived experience to shine more brightly, and guide more Scots to safety.