TEARFUL friends and family members of four former drug addicts looked on as they celebrated being clean for 14 weeks.

The quartet were all part of the MYOX4 programme, run at a recovery hub in Blackbird Leys that is defying critics with its success since its opening in June.

Officers from Oxford City Council and Thames Valley Police were also present at the graduation ceremony at the centre in Knights Road earlier this month to watch the four celebrate the landmark.

Manager DeeDee Wallace said: “We have had an incredible start to the programme in Blackbird Leys and I could not be happier.

 

“Six months ago, some people said a programme like ours would not be well-received, and told us ‘You can’t have a programme like this here’.

“But the exact opposite has been my experience. We have been so warmly welcomed – people have been bringing us home-made cakes. It’s a lot easier for people to access a service when they know the community is holding it in high esteem.”

National charity the Lifeline Project, which runs MYOX4, formerly ran a service in Cowley Road that closed its doors in March. Social enterprise Turning Point now runs drug and alcohol services on behalf of Oxfordshire County Council from the same location.

The new Lifeline hub later opened on the site of a former tattoo parlour.

Simon Perks, 53, of Blackbird Leys, was an alcoholic from the ages of 13 to 25 and is now dedicating his time to volunteering at the hub.

He said: “I have lived here all my life and one of the reasons I volunteered here was that I wanted to put back into Blackbird Leys what I took out of it. This community needs something like this and I would like to see it in others. In Oxford there are lots of people with drink and drug problems.

“This saves the government millions. I must have cost the NHS a huge amount the number of times I was hospitalised and when you take the police and paramedics into consideration as well a lot could be saved with services like this.”

Ms Wallace added: “This is something that we in Blackbird Leys are going to reap the benefits of. When a person is in active addiction, the devastation goes further than that person. But a person in recovery is employable and they are community assets, and work very hard to give back.

“In my dreams there would be a MYOX1, MYOX2 and MYOX3 as well as MYOX4. What I know for sure is that in the next six months there will be more success stories.”