A Year On….

4.4.19

I am on the train to London this morning. I have a table to myself. I have burnt my tongue on my coffee, but otherwise, all is good with the world. The Uckfield to London line is lovely – quiet and pretty. It’s cold but sunny today. England looks glorious. I have checked my phone…… there are 24 days until the London Marathon. Last year the London Marathon broke another world record: the most money raised in an annual single day charity fundraising event for the twelfth successive year. In 2018, runners raised £63.7 million for charity. It’s a really, really special event. This year, 414,168 people applied to run. Around 40,000 of them, from around the world, are in the final stages of race day preparations. They feel nervous, excited, confident or undertrained. Of the 40,000 runners, a significant number are fundraising. The love in these people. The passion. The journey that they’re on.

Race day 2018:

I made friends the moment I left the front door with my race number pinned to my chest. Smiles. Tobias and his family on the platform, helping me find my way to the start line. Tim on the train, in his 70’s, whose wife had forbidden him to run this year because he was awaiting surgery. He asked me my story. I told him. I told a complete stranger. My saddest story. Except on marathon day he didn’t really feel like a stranger. He found me online afterwards and sent me a message to congratulate me. I arrived at Waterloo train station with my debit card and my mobile, absolutely desperate for the toilet. A homeless lady was giving out change to the runners so we could use the loo. I repaid her as soon as I could.

We were allowed up to the London Bridge platform in small groups. As I waited at the bottom of the escalator to get up to the platform, a lady asked me about the run. She was on her way to visit her son in rehab. She wrote down “Addaction” and looked me in the eyes. We probably had a lot in common. She stroked my arm as she wished me luck.

And on the way to the start line the sun shone and shone. It shone as though we were lighting it up ourselves.

The Start Line:

Everyone was running for something, something close to home. Everybody has something. We were running to raise money so that we could make things better. Such hope. Such faith that something can change. You hugged people. And when you hugged people you threw your chest into it, you threw your heart, your body into it. If there was ever a physical way to show support and joy and love, and to say, “I know why you’re doing this,” and “I know what this means to you,” and “it means that to me too”, it is this. Joy and hope and faith and strength. Something good will come out of this. This is the best face of humanity.

Thinking about Eva kept me going. Remembering why I was there. The familiar faces I saw: my cousin and his wife, my friends, Eva’s friends, my stepson’s smile, my wonderful family and my eldest daughter with ice pops. I don’t know how the love becomes energy, but it does, it really does. The gift of bumping into a friend 6 miles or so towards the end – I needed that too. I just managed to overtake the man carrying a washing machine on his back before crossing the finish line. I cried and I cried. My biggest apology.

It’s nearly a year since I ran. My final total was £7692,01. I am in London to visit Addaction’s Head Office and to find out how your money was spent. I meet Alexis, with whom I had regular contact with over the course of the marathon training. It is the first time we have met in person, the first time we have heard each other’s voices. She gives me a strong hug, shows me the office and makes me a coffee. And she has so much to tell me.

Addaction has an annual income of around £65 million.

• £55 million comes in through commissioning (local government paying for local services). Commissioning is tight. It covers the bare bones of services.
• £9 million is from lottery funding.
• £1 million is from fundraising.

Addaction has a small but committed group of regular donors. Fundraising is hard work. It might be easier for them if they were to use photos of people suffering to elicit sympathy, empathy, all the kinds of emotions that encourage us donate to a cause. Addaction has a strong ethical stance on this – they will not compound the stereotype. They are absolutely committed to reframing the narrative around addiction. This is absolutely vital – changing the language, directing the dialogue, positively influencing and educating the media, lobbying the government, influencing the agenda for the new drugs strategy. Influencing change. We desperately need change.

Addaction is working, hard. Its previous position, to not become embroiled in politics, has changed. They are taking strong stances on issues. They are asked to comment on appropriate stories in the media. And they comment. They have taken on a Public Policy Manager to lobby the government. They lobby. It is all working. A recent rise of over 700% in heroin withdrawal drugs (which would have put many drug charities into the red overnight) was lobbied and lobbied by Addaction, and was acted on by the government and the problem went away. The first license for a drug testing facility (such as those provided by Loop at festivals) was granted to Addaction by the Home Office this year after months of work. This means drug users can have their drugs tested, given immediate results about what they contain, and given non-judgemental harm reduction advice if they decide to take them (many decide against this when they hear what is in them). People will take drugs. But we can stop the deaths.

The money you gave funded programmes like the youth programme run by Addaction called “Mind and Body”. This is a hugely successful programme run for 11-18 year olds to decrease and prevent addictive behaviours, in this case self-harming. Unsurprisingly, statistics show a strong link between self-harm and suicide. 91% of young people who attended Mind and Body had stopped self-harming by the end of the programme. Stop for a second. Take a deep breath. Absorb that. Could be your friend’s child. Could be your child. Might have been you once.

It is not an exaggeration to say that it saves lives. I honestly don’t know how to say thank you enough.

Marathon day is joyous. It is the best face of humanity. It is love and it is tears, it is hope and it is faith. This one day. But in reality it is so much more than that. The huge emotional investment goes on for months. It may be quieter, it may be steadier, but it is there. More beautiful still, the work and the commitment and the love and the faith and the hope go on throughout the charity sector all the time. There are over 1500 employees at Addaction and over 800 volunteers. They are changing the way society looks at addiction. They are changing the way that people suffering with addiction are treated, by the public and by the law. This really, really matters.

And the love and the faith and the hope go on through all of you. All of you who have read, listened, followed, supported and run with me, who tracked me and messaged me and donated huge sums of money to this hugely important and personal cause. We have changed things. We are helping. We are all part of reframing the narrative.

The love is not just there on marathon day. Marathon day celebrates it and is wonderful and loud and overt and happy. But the best face of humanity surrounds us. It surrounds us all the time.