Alive and Kicking in Glasgow
BY TARA O LIAITH
New research in Scotland showing that children as young as nine
are being offered drugs and media reports this week of an
11-year-old boy in possesion of £500 worth of heroin in his
schoolbag, will no doubt make one man even more determined to his
efforts to educate youngsters in the dangers of drug abuse.
That man is David Bryce, founder and director of Calton Athletic
Recovery Group in Glasgow.
What began 13 years ago as a football team and social club in
Glasgow's East End to give recovering addicts support and the
ability to stay clean, has become a registeed charity funded by
Greater Glasgow Health Board and Glasgow City Council, with a
success rate of 72% in getting addicts clean, and staying clean.
In 1985, Davy Bryce, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, who
got himself off heroin, recognised that it was back in the
community that addicts faced the battle to stay clean. With that
in mind, Calton Athletic Football Club was born.
It took another six long years before it was possible to get
funding to establish a recovery programme from a centrepoint.
1991 seen that dream realised when Jimmy Boyi, from Edinburgh's
Gateway Exchange put up the money for a premises for the group.
He had seen the good work they had been doing and up until then
Davy had been helping addicts from his own home.
What began as a three roomed premises in Glasgow's London Road,
has now become a larger centre in Dixon Street in the City
Centre.
No longer just a football team, Calton Athletic offers not only a
very succesful day recovery programme but a practical aftercare
programme. And now thanks to a unique partnership with Scotland's
biggest selling newspaper the Daily Record, recovering addicts
who are ready to face normal life again,can, as part of the
aftercare programme, become vendors for the newspaper.
Alongside these programmes are the Drugs Prevention School
Project, the Drug Prevention Soccer Sevens for Under 11's, who
boast Scotland's own Ally McCoist as the League's biggest fan,
the Under 18's Prevention in Action, of whom World Boxing
Champion Prince Naseem is an honorary member and the Calton
Athletic Women's Group.
But perhaps their biggest claims to fame, apart from the great
work they've done for addicts in Glasgow, is having a film, Alive
and Kicking, made about them and acting as advisers for the box
office smash Trainspotting. The stars of Alive and Kicking,
Cracker star Robbie Coltrane and funny man Lenny Henry are now
patrons of Calton are both particularly impressed with the groups
work with the schools.
``Their work in schools is totally inspiring'' says Robbie Coltrane
``Clearly this is a marvellous way of persuading kids not to use
drugs. For pupils to hear it from people who've been to hell and
back must have a dramatic effect''.
So what exactly does the Drugs Prevention Schools Project do?
Quite simply, the team give honest experience from a credible
source - their own. No shock tactics, no moralising, just
honesty. Which is the key to change for every addict.
But like any other group trying to do good work within
communities, staying afloat, financially, never proves easy.
Particularly when you're a thorn in the side of the Statutory
authorities, as Davy Bryce believes Calton Athletic always has
been, mainly because they have constanly refused to toe the
`party' line of giving addicts drugs on prescription, otherwise
known as Methadone alias Harm Reduction.
Calton have always and will always refuse to compromise their
stance of clients doing cold turkey and then staying completely
drug free.
While Calton Athletic have over the past 13 years won widespread
acclaim for the work they've done, there is, as always, the
doubters and critics.
Despite their sucess rate, the critisim appears to be a failure
to accept that a group of reformed addicts who've been to hell
and found their own way back, drug free, maybe, just maybe, know
better than the ``professionals''.
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