Hello friends, as I enter my 12th year of sobriety from alcohol, I am expanding my Addiction Counselling Services in Leeds and Yorkshire, by releasing my new book and corresponding app. This is to try to reach as many people as possible, suffering from Substance Use Disorders (SUD,s), Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD's), and Gambling Disorders (GD's). Those who know they are ready to or need to change. Those who are stuck and those who are curious. Those who are not interested in groups just yet, or not who don't want to talk to a therapist, or those who may not be able to afford drug or addiction counselling.
2024 will see the release of my new book called "Sober Days - How To Train Your Earworm and Stop Drinking Alcohol" with a new App from Start Recovery called "Sober Days". I wrote this with the help of a good friend and author Ros Wilson. Ros has had over 55 years of experience in the UK education field, working as a Head Teacher and then Education Consultant and National Curriculum Advisor. Ros is also the creator of Talk:Write, Big Writing, VCOP, and The Criterion Scale. Ros had been telling me I should write a book to try to capture the work that I have been doing over the last 10 years in the field of addiction therapy. Over the last year and a half, we have been working on "Sober Days" together, where I introduce my I.A.C (Identify, Acknowledge, Change) 3-step addiction therapy approach. Ros said to me "We need to get your techniques to as many people as possible.... and I can help you do that"! I had been wanting to write a book for years but always told myself I was "too busy", but I just knew I had to do this with Ros.
I have been developing my I.A.C 3-step approach to addictions since 2012 when I was in rehab after I stopped drinking alcohol and finally started getting better. The book introduces "The Earworm" which we chose to represent the internal voice we hear when we first start thinking about drinking.
Mark Franklin - Addiction Specialist, Leeds, UK
This book is so different to any other recovery (or sober literature) books you may have read or come across. It is designed to be fully accessible for those with brain fog who are looking to stop or modify their drinking patterns, meaning it's more like a manual with evidence-based techniques to help those in the contemplation or action stage of Proshaska & Diclamentes "Cycle Of Change".
I am a little bit nervous about how the book will be received in "Recovery Circles", but at the same time very excited! We have tried to keep it as simple as possible with a rather lighthearted but effective approach to allow the reader to get a good grasp of I.A.C.
My private drug and alcohol counselling services started in 2015 in Leeds, and I have been pretty much fully booked since pre-covid 2019, with short notice cancellation bookings being offered for new people wanting to book in for counselling sessions with me. 2019 was also the year that I passed my first 1000 client marker which was a huge achievement for me and the company. I currently have a caseload of around 25 to 30 clients a week that I see Tuesday to Friday with a long day into the evening on a Wednesday. Mondays I am closed for clients as Mondays are my admin and planning days. My expansion plans changed after re-assessing what I could offer as an accessible option for people who were stuck waiting for addiction treatment, and for the last year and a half, I have been planning and writing my first book on alcoholism.
Mark Franklin's new book "Sober Days - How To Train Your Earworm & Stop Drinking Alcohol" will hopefully be released mid/ late 2024. The book is in the pre-published proofreading stage at the moment just before we start sending copies for review.