IN RECOVERY - The Ark House Podcast - SEASON 2 TRAIL

IN RECOVERY - The Ark House Podcast is back for Season Two on June 1st 2026.

This podcast unites people in the recovery community with the aim to give one strong voice where we share vital resources, advice and stories that will cultivate a supportive environment that ultimately improves the lives of those on their recovery journeys.

Richard and Sam are here for 25 weeks to being you inspiring interviews with former residents of Ark House Rehab in Scarborough, Celebrities on their recovery journeys and Professionals within the recovery community who give game changing advice and discuss vital topics around addiction. 

On this short tease from Season Two you can hear

CELEBRITIES

Ulrika Jonsson, Ore Oduba, John Robins and Luke Bateman

GRADUATES

Janet, Sam and Jess

PROFESSIONALS

Michael (Forward Leeds) Angela (Addictions North East) Neil (Recovery Games)

Join our recovery conversation and get ready for Season Two

JUNE 1st 2026

If you or a loved one need help from addiction, please know there is help. Reach out and speak to Ark House today....

PHONE 01723 371869

EMAIL info@arkhouserehab.co.uk

ADDRESS 15 Valley Road, Scarborough, Y011 2LY

WEBSITE www.arkhouserehab.co.uk

FACEBOOK  @arkhouserehabltd

INSTAGRAM @in_recovery_podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

In recovery.

unknown 0:06

In recovery.

SPEAKER_08 0:15

We are back with season two of In Recovery, the Archives Podcast, on Monday the first of June, for an extended series of more than 25 episodes. In Recovery is a companion guide for those in recovery from addiction issues or for people who just want to know more about the stories and science behind addiction. We'll be joined by some of the UK's biggest celebrities who share their journeys with us, including Ulrika Johnson, Ori Ubador, and John Robbins.

SPEAKER_09 0:55

This whole thing about it being a progressive illness is so, so important because I only sort of picked up drinking on a sort of regular basis during lockdown. And it was fun. And I love being a bit hedonistic and a bit crazy. But then it really, really pulled the rug from out of my feet because I was no longer in control. And I remember those moments going, you know you shouldn't be doing this. But I I had absolutely no control over that. And I thought I never thought it would be me. I never thought that would be me. And even the conversations I used to have in my head while I was drinking, like when I was on my knees in the cupboard under the stairs, swigging around the bottle, going, What are you doing? What what has become of you? What has become of you? And then it's like, well, I'll drink to kill that feeling.

SPEAKER_06 1:47

You know, we can be as connected as anything, but actually our world can become smaller if we like. We can go days without actually interacting with any body human. The world of the landscape has changed as well. And one of the greatest harms is that the digital world has even in the last five years has been a tsunami of change. We have just let war but it's a whole new existence. I guess where I saw the intervention that was completely necessary was I have two children. One of them is eight years old, a year younger than I was when I was first exposed to pornography. And the availability pornography from 30 years ago to what it is today is completely unrecognizable. I was like, this is going to be their normal if we don't admit that there is a heinous issue. I was terrified. But there have been a number of things that happened over the course of the last two years that just made me go, what am I afraid of?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

And I'd never known what an alcoholic was, because what I learned an alcoholic was was very different to what I'd assumed it was. I decided to look back at my life and to revisit certain episodes to try and really understand what alcohol means. Why was it so hard to live without? Why did it make me feel better? Why did it make things worse? And why did I wake up one night and think I just can't do this anymore? I just looking back from a sober place, it became clear that alcohol had always stood out. I always noticed it from a very young age and always tried to get access to it whenever I could. This adult thing was just looming very large in a child's mind.

SPEAKER_04 3:38

Absolutely. There was definitely a degree of this is the character that people expect of me. This is the character that I need to live up to to be able to operate in this world, survive in this world, be successful in this world. This is what's expected of me. This is what everybody else around me does. And that's who I need to be to be this elite sports person playing in the National Rugby League. And of course, I think, I don't, you know, I'm not sure what the sports people in in the UK have spoken about, but alcohol and drugs is embedded into elite sports and professional sports. I think it just comes with that sort of party atmosphere to it and party culture. It's, you know, work hard, play hard. We have a really like a gambling is embedded within our cultures. It's extremely normalized across all sectors, you know, not just professional sports. It is just so deeply embedded within sort of our identity as Australians. Like we are gamblers, you know.

SPEAKER_08 4:49

We have inspirational stories from previous residents of Arkaus who've turned their lives around.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Life and and then lockdown was one of my biggest downfalls. During lockdown, I hadn't got a routine, I could drink whenever I wanted, and that's when it started. I started to drink during the day. And I'd always been very careful not to, unless I was going out and meeting people or doing things for special occasions. I was not certainly heading for losing my family. Really? And I I was killing myself. That was the consequence. I was going to die. I'd very soon gone from being able to travel because I have a daughter that lives in Vienna, to being able to travel to see her to I wouldn't have been able to get on a plane, I wouldn't have been able to even get to the airport. Well, in fact, I probably wouldn't have even made it out to the car to get there. And I was just slowly getting bed-banged, you know, my hands shook, and it did happen very, very quickly.

SPEAKER_03 5:51

One thing I'm proud of recently, it was my birthday on the 28th of March. And I I got a card off my brother, and it said inside it to Sam, Happy birthday. So proud of you. And um, I'd never really heard him say anything like that, you know. Uh that he was proud of me, and to read that and to see that, that's probably something that's quite recent that just um yeah, it brings a smile to my face. So I was really grateful for that. The the the advice I would tell younger Sam would be you don't need to pretend like you know everything. It's alright to be wrong, it's alright to listen to other people's perspectives, it's alright that other people can be right and you can be wrong. So let go of that idea that you are right about everything and open your open your mind up, man. That's probably what I'd say.

SPEAKER_10 6:42

I'm very grateful to be alive and to be able to carry the message not only of recovery but to be able to create awareness on my specific jugal choice and how damaging that is. Um and I'm grateful to be able to I've known the people that I've lost through this illness. Yeah. Don't be so hard on yourself because you know this is an illness I was suffering with, and I just thought I was not a good person, and that and it makes me a bit emotional, but you know, just to tell her that you know if you keep keep trying, at some point it will happen, and it's not you, it's not about you're not a bad person, you're you're a good person, and you will get there if you get if you get the help you need and you can identify with what you suffer with. That's what I'd say. That's beautiful. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. And congratulations. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_08 7:37

Plus, we speak to professionals from the recovery community around the UK for expert tips and guidance.

SPEAKER_05 7:44

From those descriptions, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the goal is to like ditch the old ones, ditch the old tapes, and just have adult only, you know. Um but it's not, it's just to become aware of when you're in each one. If you imagine that you're like driving along, focused, you're in the moment, paying attention to your surroundings, that's adult mode, right? Now, let's say somebody pulls out in front of you at a junction. How do you react? Not well.

SPEAKER_08 8:06

There'd certainly be a hand gesture, potentially something along the lines of what the fuck are you doing?

SPEAKER_05 8:12

Yeah, and people would react in different ways to that, wouldn't they? Some people would be straight into that critical parent mode. They shouldn't be doing that. That's where your anger comes in, that's where there's some choice swearing going on. That's where there's all these like self-righteous thoughts. Some people they'd just be scared, right? Swear about the way they just try and avoid it, they'd be in shock. And that's straight into child mode, isn't it? That fear. So it's different people based on their lived experiences would have different learned reactions to these certain situations. That's it. It's basically learning to be a grown-up in ways that often we feel like we are being a grown-up, but it's it's actually just this kind of natural pattern. If you become aware that you're like regularly switched to child in a certain situation, or a certain person keeps triggering that critical parent state in you, you can actually slowly teach yourself to respond differently in those situations, making an effort to maybe be more empathetic or less judgmental or assert yourself more. Basically, centering yourselves in the here and now and choosing your reaction appropriately. The more deliberate we are in how we interact, instead of just playing these old tapes, we can iron out some of these old knee-jerk reactions.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

One of the things we look at is we have about 150 beds all together, and I think we have about a third of them are females, so roughly 40-50 beds are females. So a lot of them come in and they're in shared accommodation. And what we try to do, we run female groups only so that we can look at what they're going through, look at what you know, have they got social services? Are the children removed? What level are they at? Is there any hope of getting these children back or not? And you know, looking at whether we can build that family unit. And once they've been in for a while, so they're in different stages, and once they get into stage three, we look at putting them in their own properties, so they'll go into single occupancy, and then that's when you say that they're allowed access to the children. The children are then allowed weekend visits and things like that. So we've got, I think there's five women in at the minute whose children have been returned and they've got full custody of the children. Yeah, you know, we have a lady who's in now who's pregnant, she's now in her own property. Her children were removed before she came here, you know, her children what she had prior, but now she's working with social services to look to keep that baby within the property because we're there to give her that support as well.

SPEAKER_07 10:14

That's kind of what we wanted to do, really. I mean, I wish I could take all the credit for coming up with the format of the recovery games, but the the idea really came from a lot of the people that I was working with at that time and what gaps we felt was missing within their recovery, really. Lack of connection, lack of purpose, we don't know where to go, we don't feel comfortable when we do go to those spaces that are already there, and we've got how to have fun. So I just wanted to kind of yeah, that was the ingredients basically. It it was I felt purposeful in my role then to try and do something with that, and and started working with the idea about the uh the recovery games. It it's it surrounded itself with nostalgia. So it's one of those events that we all loved when we were when we were growing up. So it's a knock-out used to be on TV, ultimate wipeout, the old galas that you went to with your family as a children. So we wanted an event that incorporated all those events. So a bit of competition, a bit of connection, some some live, some live music, creative spaces for people to explore and have conversations and and and feel safe to do so. So that is what the recovery games is. Ultimately, it's a it's a tournament of 40 teams with people in recovery competing in a it's a knockout type tournament in a festival environment. You know, I've worked in recovery settings for for a long time, and you know, we we talk about the doom and gloom and the hard work of recovery, and and it is it you know, it will be the hardest sort of battle that somebody will ever have to face. So I just wanted to bring some light to that really. You know, let's if there's gonna be a light at the end of the tunnel, let's make it as bright and as colourful and as loud as we as we possibly can.

SPEAKER_08 11:46

You can download and listen to the brand new season of In Recovery, the Apicast Podcast, for Monday, the first of June. Join our recovery conversation.