How the Kintyre forest is changing the lives of people with drug and alcohol problems

“You can shout, scream or swear,” says Ailsa Geddes, giving a few examples of the last that are not fit for print.

Ailsa is a support worker for the charity With You and she is here in the woods of Kintyre leading a group of clients in a forest therapy session.

We have trekked a little way through the trees and down a hillside to a wooden lean-to where a fire is being prepared for the cooking of lunch.

The river makes a perfect host. It is Recovery Month and later we will scoop handfuls of flower petals and scatter to them to the water, watching them float downstream as we remember those we’ve lost to drug and alcohol use.

Before then, one participant, a former gamekeeper and skilled angler, catches a fish. Two of the women, brave and hardy, go for a swim in the river, its water orange-hued from a rich iron content.

There are activities galore, from traditional crafts to the more unusual tree-bathing.

This is nature prescribing, a non-medical therapy used by With You to support people with drug and alcohol problems.

Myra Walker loves it all.

The 39-year-old was referred through addiction services to With You and has not long finished a three month spell in rehab from June to August.

“I'm doing all right,” she says, from within a voluminous dry robe. Myra was one of the swimmers. “Taking it every day at a time.”

Myra talks about the crafts they have made in the woods, cooking on the open fire, cold water therapy and the benefit of weekly catch ups.

Connecting with nature has been a huge help, she says.

When Myra throws stones into the water she thinks of the things she wants to get rid of - resentment, anger.

“Being out in nature has really helped me - no distractions, just the wilderness,” she says. “I feel free and connected with nature, and it's kind of an organic way to meditate.

“It seems a bit of an odd thing but actually, when you're here and you experience it, I just feel a lot more chilled.”

It can be difficult in rural areas to access support and the people at today’s session are all from Campbelltown and the surrounding areas.

Myra said it’s also helpful to be with other people going through the same thing, and not letting those people down is a strong motivation to keep coming.

It’s not easy though. Her plan is to “get through today and get through tomorrow”.

She adds: “I’ve not got any big hopes, one day at a time.

“I’m not looking too far in the future, because the future is none of my business at the moment.”

Ailsa takes us to what she has named “the pregnant tree”, a regal beech standing sturdy and magnificent halfway up a hill. Amid its heft, hidden in a small cleft, is a skinny sapling, too scrappy and wee to stand on its own.

“Beech trees take 100 years to grow, 100 years to live and 100 years to die,” Ailsa says. “When the sapling starts to grow tall enough to need light, she will begin to die and let the new tree take her place.”

The beech is covered in a rich, soft moss that Ailsa encourages us to sniff. The microbes, she says, are a natural antidepressant.

Trees are lungs, she tells us, the inverse of human lungs. They put out oxygen, we breath it in. We breath out carbon dioxide, they absorb it.

And all these trees we shelter underneath, Ailsa tells us, are a family, connected by the wood wide web.

Each tree stands distinct but underground there is a complex web of roots, bacteria and fungi that link them and let them speak to one another.

“They connect to each other,” Ailsa says. “So if one tree gets ill, another tree can give it nutrients.

“They are a family and they have a social network. They know how high each other grows so they don’t block the light of another tree.”

“If you look at the pregnant tree,” she adds, “It’s got a big scar and it’s been hit and it’s been blown around but it’s still grown.

“It’s been battered, it’s been bruised, it still continues, it doesn’t stop.”

As a metaphor, it is almost too obvious.

Ailsa had been working for a rape crisis charity and she found women were calmer and more able to absorb information away from a formal office setting.

During Covid she researched and found a qualification in forest therapy.

In the woods, clients are encouraged to speak to the tree. I asked what Ailsa enquires of her pregnant tree but I have the interaction backwards.

“I don’t ask it,” she says, “It tells me. You ask the tree a question and then you listen very quietly.”

One man, she said, asked the tree if he was a good person. That is a grave responsibility for a tree to bear.

If this seems a little airy-fairy, it’s not. Green prescribing is well evidenced as an effective tool to support mental health.

A study by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs suggested that visits to woodlands for recreation could save around £26 million a year in treating mental ill-health in Scotland.

The Defra study, led by the University of Sheffield, also estimates that trees in urban populations could reduce Scotland’s bill for antidepressants by around £1m each year.

The research study demonstrates the “avoided costs” to the NHS through improved well-being by visiting woodlands and nature.

While the study relates to mental health and not drugs and alcohol, With You is adamant it shows the positive impact of nature prescribing.

With You helped Kara Jane Pope into rehab in 2023, a three-month stay that was “very much needed”.

She started using drugs when she was in primary six. “Solvents were my thing,” she said, “And then it got to the harder and harder stuff.”

In this area, in this community, she repeats that it is difficult to access support, but this service has helped her hugely. Prior to joining the group, she was commuting to Glasgow twice a week to attend recovery groups - a seven-hour round trip.

Ailsa would drive her up and back to get to groups or she would take the long bus ride.

She has, to her own surprise, become a keen amateur photographer and goes for long daily walks “taking pictures constantly”.

Just three years ago the picture was very different.

“I got to the point I was really bad and I honestly don’t think I would have survived another Christmas and New Year.

“I was in a really bad place, stuck in drugs and alcohol and prison - the whole shebang.”

Her longest sentence was 10 months but prison did not give any opportunity “to work on myself,” she said.

“And then I came out of prison and there’s a shop down the road so I’ve gone straight into the shop for a drink and I’m just back in that bl**dy cycle again,” Kara Jane added.

She was nine months sober last Saturday - her longest spell so far.

Her ring finger glints with an enormous sparkler. Kara Jane and her fiancé, both 39, have been together since they were 14.

The relationship has been rocky but “it’s very different now.”

“I’ve done all that throwing the ring back stuff - but I’m not that crazy, mad drunk person any more and it’s very different now because I’m very different.”

And Kara Jane has plans now. It’s her ambition - “I’m absolutely determined” - to have a holiday abroad. She volunteers in the community shop and there have been job offers, although she doesn’t feel quite ready yet for paid employment.

“I chickened out,” she adds, as though every day isn’t an act of bravery.

She has a new kitten and is decorating her home, a nice feeling after moving through “I don’t know how many flats” in Campbeltown.

When Ailsa talks about her pregnant tree, she mentions Kara Jane. “Kara burnt herself. So she's got scars. You can draw parallels to the fact that the tree’s got a scar, but it still keeps going.

“It's still beautiful, it's still lovely, even though it's got a scar.”

Ailsa acknowledges that not everyone will be comfortable with the finer points of tree therapy.

“They all think I'm a bit mad because I've got pregnant trees, but they take what they like from it. You don't force it. It's never forced.”

People in the most deprived parts of Scotland are 12 times more likely to die from drug misuse than those in more well off communities.

There is a clear and proven link between deprivation and lack of access to nature. In deprived areas there is significantly less access to green spaces and residents are less likely to take part in outdoor recreation.

What’s left is a disparity that creates the situation where those who need nature most are least likely to have access.

Vicky Gamble had never thought of using the nature on her doorstep as therapy.

Vicky started attending With You on the second attempt. She ignored a first referral and it was cancelled.

“I was just very hesitant to go because I’m not very good with groups,” the 30-year-old said.

“This is different because there’s no pressure on you to sit with the group, you just come in and they let you take your time.”

Vicky said she had struggled for years, having started drinking at the age of 13, but her difficulties with alcohol and drugs became worse when her mum died in 2016.

She had been in and out of prison and repeats that living in a rural area made accessing addictions support and mental health support difficult.

Having the support of With You has been crucial for Vicky because she doesn’t have family around her. She hopes to get to a place where she can train as a recovery worker and support others in a similar situation to herself.

If her mum could see her now, Vicky says, she would be incredibly proud.

Back at the river, it’s time for the ceremony of remembrance and we throw our petals.

Ailsa talks as though the petals are sentient. Some of them become stuck on the rocks and she gives these stragglers a little nudge. “This one isn’t ready to go,” she says, prodding at a flower I threw to the river while thinking of my father.

“It needs a little more time,” she says. “Some need more time and more patience but the river current will help them get on their way.”