Welcome to the 'This Is The North Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn.

In this episode, Alison is joined by Dominic Wills, who shares his experience of addiction and how recovery as a young person can look different to the stereotypes. Dominic explains how drugs were readily available through friends and later via social media, and how his use progressed from cannabis and MDMA to "anything" he could access. Despite continuing to achieve at school and maintaining an outward appearance of coping, he describes being rarely sober in school, the impact of ADHD, and how addiction fuelled deception, debt, and serious strains on family relationships, including fears for his safety and missing person reports.

Dominic reflects on seeking support from around the age of 14 through local authority drug and alcohol services and later adult services, but feeling that services often didn't reflect his situation as a young person who wasn't injecting or involved in the criminal justice system.

He describes how leaving school removed structure and led to escalation, and how in late 2019 he first encountered peer-led recovery models that showed him people, especially young people, can get clean and live well. After a severe spiral over Christmas 2019, he went to rehab for two months and says that's when he began taking recovery seriously.

The conversation also explores stigma, why visible recovery matters, and Dominic's view that alcohol and drugs are often treated inconsistently in policy and public attitudes.

He discusses decriminalisation vs legalisation, the risks of street drugs, and argues that criminalising personal possession is unproductive. Dominic shares how peer support and different recovery models helped him rebuild responsibility and trust, and what he would say to someone "functioning" but quietly struggling.

Dominic closes by describing what recovery has enabled for him as a young person, going to uni, living with students, DJing, going on holiday, and still spending time with friends in pubs, emphasising that recovery should be a tool to reclaim life rather than a boundary that keeps people trapped.

Timestamps:

00:00 Drugs at 14

00:33 A young voice changing the recovery narrative

01:07 How it started

01:43 Seeking it out and why he kept using

04:23 Functioning addiction

06:39 Trying to stop early and not being ready

08:08 ADHD and addiction

08:52 Why recovery felt impossible

10:14 Turning point: Peer-led recovery, rehab, and taking it seriously

11:04 When systems miss you: Age, privilege, and not being 'the right kind' of addict

12:25 Alcohol vs drugs: Generational divide and why the comparison matters

14:56 The damage to family & rebuilding trust through responsibility

16:59 What helped

19:07 Drug policy in the UK

28:19 Advice for 'functioning' addiction

29:39 Recovery

This conversation is a challenge to every assumption we hold about what addiction looks like, who it affects, and what recovery can be. Dominic is honest, sharp, and proof that young people deserve to be heard and not fitted into a system that wasn't built for them.

Host: Alison Dunn

Guest: Dominic Wills

This podcast is produced by Purpose Made.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to 'This Is The North' Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn, an award-winning charity chief executive and former solicitor. This podcast is supported by the Society Matters Foundation and is dedicated to curating and sharing knowledge, powering the change we need for a more equal and inclusive society.

In this episode, Alison sits down with Richard O'Neill MBE - storyteller, author, playwright, and Professor in Practice at Durham University. For centuries, Richard's Romani traveller ancestors were story keepers in the Northeast, travelling from Newcastle to Yorkshire to Carlisle, listening to stories in villages and towns, then carrying them forward. They were, as Richard puts it, "illiterate in reading and writing, but incredibly literate in communication."

But this conversation isn't just about oral tradition. It's about discovering that words Alison has spoken her entire life - "gadji," "chav," "chavi" - come from Romani. Evidence of centuries woven into the Geordie dialect itself. It's about why Richard's musician friend couldn't grasp the concept of chatting to a stranger at a Morrisons checkout. "We are story people here," Richard explains. And it's about why Richard refused a million pounds to appear on reality TV that embeds stereotypes rather than documents real lives.

Richard and Alison explore why the Northeast has a rhythm to its speech that makes storytelling natural, how a 3-year-old and 103-year-old laughed at the same things during a care home storytelling session, and why teaching children how narrative works is our defense against misinformation. They discuss AI as "the new steam," Richard's accidental career that started with one phone call, and the most powerful story Richard tells, a beautiful story about empathy and individual decency. A reminder that when stories are told from the heart, they change how we see each other. Those are the stories we keep.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction

01:30 Traveller Identity and Story Keeping

04:20 Storytelling in Education

07:26 The Traveller Community

10:47 Media Stereotypes

16:47 Storytelling in the Age of AI

21:16 Richard's Journey as a Storyteller

27:37 The Most Powerful Story

2026 is the National Year of Reading, and Richard's work at Seven Stories reminds us why that matters.

Host: Alison Dunn

Guest: Richard O'Neill MBE

Learn more: Seven Stories, Newcastle - sevenstories.org.uk

This podcast is produced by Purpose Made.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to 'This Is The North' Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn, an award-winning charity chief executive and former solicitor. This podcast is supported by the Society Matters Foundation and is dedicated to curating and sharing knowledge, powering the change we need for a more equal and inclusive society.

One in 29 children in every classroom have been bereaved of a parent or sibling, carrying grief that most adults struggle to talk about. Meanwhile, in medical training, there's a belief that "as healthcare professionals, we all feel a profound sense of failure when one of our patients dies." Over the last hundred years, death moved from homes to hospitals. We handed it to professionals. In doing so, we lost the language, the confidence, and the community knowledge that once made dying something we did together.

In this episode, Alison sits down with Julian Prior from Compassionate Gateshead, Dr. Elizabeth Woods, a palliative care consultant, and Karen Perry, an end-of-life doula, to have the conversation we're often too scared to have: what happens when we lose the ability to talk about death? Their conversation reveals families who no longer recognise the signs of dying. People told their loved one is dying four, five, six times, each time treatment works, feeding a cycle that says you can fix this.

The conversation captures what policy discussions miss. Death cafes in Newcastle that fill up every month, where strangers cut through small talk in minutes to discuss what they lack in their daily lives: depth, meaning, honest conversation about mortality. Community knowledge that used to exist on every street, now having to be taught by consultants walking families through what normal dying actually looks like.

Alison and her guests explore what happens when we can't say the word "died," why medication struggles to control what fear is doing, and how communities are remembering that dying isn't something we fear alone but something we face together. They discuss the inequalities that compound at end of life—the cost of wills, lasting powers of attorney, funerals arriving when families are already struggling. Why teachers need resources to support that one child in every classroom carrying grief.

The conversation examines what Compassionate Gateshead is building: a network connecting organisations supporting asylum seekers, people with dementia, young people who've lost loved ones, workplaces trying to support bereaved employees. The Festival of Compassion running all February with workshops, films, and death cafes creating permission and space to talk.

Death will happen to us all. The question is whether we'll face it alone, unprepared, fearful and silent, or whether we'll face it together, with language, with confidence, with community.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction

01:00 Understanding End-of-Life Doulas

03:38 Building Compassionate Communities

07:02 The Medicalisation of Death

10:34 What Families Actually Fear

13:01 What Normal Dying Looks Like

18:18 Death Cafes and Community Spaces

26:56 Inequalities That Compound

40:12 The Festival of Compassion

41:49 Final Reflections

Host: Alison Dunn

Guests: Julian Prior, Dr. Elizabeth Woods, Karen Perry

Learn more about Compassionate Gateshead and the Festival of Compassion here.

This podcast is produced by Purpose Made.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.