About James
Written by the one who was rung about.
James was the son in the family conversations this site is about, not the parent having them. That is useful for one reason and useless for several others.
The wrong way round
This site is written for relatives by the person their relative was. That is worth saying at the top rather than burying.
James Roberts. Born in Manchester in February 1976. Drank daily from eighteen to forty-five while running a headhunting firm with twenty staff in travel and hospitality. Functioning, by the measure people use when they mean the bills were paid. Residential treatment at Delamere in Cheshire in June 2020, sober since the twentieth of that month, and never relapsed.
He was the one being rung about. Somebody in his family spent years having the conversations this site is about, and he is aware of which side of them he was on.
What that vantage point is good for
Knowing what sat behind the answers a family gets. What the reassurance was worth. What happened to money that was given for one thing. What an offer of help looked like from the inside on a day when it was unwelcome, and why the well-made ones were the hardest to dismiss.
The second half is other people. From December 2020 he lived in Tenerife and spent several years around people in recovery and the families who arrived with them, from a dozen countries and systems. Much of what this site says about relatives was said to him directly, usually by parents.
What it is not good for
He has never sat in your chair. He does not know what it is to decide whether to pay for a fourth attempt, or to be the one in the family who is blamed for being soft. Anything here that reads as though it were written from inside your position is written from beside it.
He is not a clinician, a counsellor, an interventionist, a social worker or a solicitor, and this site is not supervised by any of those. He will also not tell you that because he stopped, your relative will. That claim is prohibited across this network.
Declared interests
He was a paying patient at one private clinic in England in 2020. That clinic is named on this page and nowhere else on the site, it has never paid for anything here, and it is not recommended.
He ran a guesthouse in Tenerife used by people in recovery. It has been sold. It is not offered, suggested or bookable through this network.
No clinic, broker, fellowship or medication provider has ever paid for placement, mention or a link. No referral fee has ever been taken from anyone. The rules this site is written under are published in full.