Volunteering

BHT does not generally use volunteers other than those who have experience of being a service user. This is part of our commitment to prepare former service users for employment. BHT has a target of having 15% of its workforce made up of former service users. What follows is an account of volunteering presented to the BHT Staff Conference on 5th June 2008.

I am Tom and nearly two years ago I spent 9 weeks at BHT's Detox Support Project in order to detox from heroin and methadone.

The first experience I had of volunteers was when, after I had been at the Detox Project for maybe four or five days, a volunteer (who I shall call Ben, although that is not his real name) escorted me back to my flat in order for me to pick up the last of my possessions. We walked and talked and Ben told me that he was a recovering addict and that he knew that detox was hard but also that it had been the beginning of a journey that had led him to a level of happiness he had never experienced whilst using drugs. I did not totally believe him but it did set me to thinking that yes, Ben did look happy, a hell of a lot happier than I felt and this gave me some considerable hope.

We got to the flat and once through the door, carnage greeted us. Syringes, bed bugs, dirty clothes, half eaten food, beer cans, body fluids, old TV’s were all over the place – truly, a dirty bomb had gone off.

Ben said nothing – made no judgements. Just helped me sift through the rubbish to find what little I wanted. I got my stuff and made to leave. “Hang on” said Ben “I want you to stand in the middle of this room and look around for a couple of minutes and then do the same in every other room.”

I did as he asked, standing in silence in the middle of a heap of shit. First the lounge, then the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and hall. The whole process took eight or ten minutes – eight or ten minutes of silence and absorbing the mess that my addiction had made of my life. At the end of it, Ben came and put an arm around my shoulder and said “Tom, you never had to live like this again.”

This was, and is, a profound moment for me. Ben was telling me that he had lived similarly to me, and that he no longer had to, and that he had faith that I could do the same.

This is the most significant of many experiences I had with volunteers whilst I was a client at Egremont.

Ben gave me inspiration and hope, and was the first person in many years who did not judge me and, this was the first time that people who were addicts like me had told me that there was hope, and a way out. More than telling me, they were living proof and they were prepared to volunteer their time to help me (a person who did not feel worthy of help).

More than that, who had faith in me.

This experience was so powerful that it cemented in my mind, not if, but when I was able, I wanted to volunteer at Egremont myself.

I now do just that, I help to run a creative writing group at the Detox project, and then spend a further six hours with clients, just being with them, being prepared to listen, being prepared to talk to them, being prepared to offer hope and identification. Being an addict, being one of them.

Volunteering does many things for me. It gives me self-esteem and self-respect. It makes me feel fulfilled both as a human being and as an addict-after all. It is the fact that I am an addict that gives me the “expertise” (if you will) to be a volunteer and try to help other addicts. It gives me a reality check and reminds me that I could return to detox as a client in a flash if I do not practice the lessons that I first learnt there.

It gives me an opportunity to learn about myself and others and to allow for creative expression through the writing group.

So, there are some of the things that volunteering does for me, but what do the clients feel about the volunteers? During Tuesday’s writing group, I took the opportunity to ask them and, now, having ensured I got their consent – this is a sample of what they said.

I asked what the volunteer did for the clients and the response were thus:

  • “They give us hope and inspiration”
  • “They make me think that maybe I could volunteer”
  • “They know where we are coming from and where we have been”

    To this last point I said, well, some members of staff have been through addiction and are now in recovery – what is the difference between them and the volunteers?

    The answer was that the clients found a greater level of empathy from the volunteers because their active addiction was more recent.

    The clients also felt that there was not a “them and us” culture in relation to volunteers.

    Lastly, they said that although the volunteers said that although the volunteers had to adhere to boundaries, they were not involved in imposing rules and this fact made it easier to talk to volunteers than to staff about certain things. I asked for example and this is the answer I got. I quote: “If I am struggling about going to a particular 12 step fellowship, I can talk to a member of staff, who may say it’s part of the detox programme – you’re doing it. Whereas I can talk to a volunteer who may identify with my struggle and tell me what they did in their situation, and how they overcame it.

    I hear that statement, I identify with it, I empathise with it, I try and understand it – for me, that’s a lot of what volunteering is all about.