We Recover Loudly – Personal Recovery and Mental Health Stories · Shell Righini

S3 Episode 010 Special Edition Steve Lawson: Recovering Loudly … Recovery, Community & Showing Up Sober

·30 min·1 clip

Steve says his daughter found empty vodka and whiskey bottles, and his wife has stayed with him since he was 16.

1. We Recover Loudly’s special edition with Steve Lawson focuses on recovery, community, and the Essex Recovery Festival. 2. Shell hosts Steve Lawson, a community researcher with the Essex Recovery Foundation, because his recovery story connects lived experience to local support work. 3. The episode asks what helps people recover loudly when alcohol, stigma, and delay keep pushing help out of reach. 4. Steve says he worked with the Essex Recovery Foundation for just over a year and had been a volunteer there for a year before that. 5. He first met the foundation during the Unit 6 Community Rehab Program in 2023 on a walk with children during week four. 6. Steve describes a 10-year on-and-off addiction that he minimized because he was still working and acting like a normal family man. 7. Depression was the reason he started drinking heavily, and the pattern escalated from weekends to drinking earlier and alone. 8. He says the last six months before help were marked by very heavy drinking on his own, blackouts, self-harm attempts, and hospital visits. 9. Shell compares that trajectory to her own experience of thinking drink was manageable until it was not. 10. They discuss how military culture, sports, and social drinking normalized binge drinking for Steve. 11. Steve says alcohol is everywhere in supermarkets, in Christmas and Easter routines, and in shows like EastEnders. 12. Shell points out that alcohol is sold openly in Tesco while other drugs are not, which makes drinking seem ordinary. 13. Steve says people are often helped only after they are already “completely fucked,” not when the problem first starts. 14. He says many people in Essex recovery spaces are ordinary workers and parents whose mental illness has turned into drink or drugs. 15. Shell and Steve talk about doctors asking about drinking when mental health medication is being discussed. 16. Steve says he could not separate his drinking problem from his mental illness, because the two were part of the same situation. 17. The tone is conversational, blunt, and self-aware, with Shell using jokes and direct language to keep the pace moving. 18. The format mixes interview questions, mutual reflection, and practical details about recovery services and the festival. 19. People in recovery, family members, and anyone curious about local peer support. 20. People looking for a light, purely informational chat with no personal detail.

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