Addiction recovery walk to bring thousands to city

Exactly one year ago, Steve Rowe was stuck at home with "nothing to fill my day up apart from drinking", he says. Fast forward 12 months, he's helping to organise a charity walk for 4,000 people who have been impacted by drug and alcohol addiction.

After a series of seizures in 2020 led to an epilepsy diagnosis, Steve lost his job and had nothing to do and nowhere to go.

His problems came to a head during a hospital stay in August 2025 - the moment he realised his lifestyle needed to change.

"The consultant finally said to me, 'If you're carrying on drinking you might as well just dispense with the medication you're taking for the epilepsy because they just cancel each other out.'

"And when he told me that, my daughter and my sister were at the bedside and that's when they said, 'Right, something needs to happen.'

"So while I was still in hospital, my daughter phoned around, got me a rehab centre here in Bradford and within two or three weeks of leaving hospital I was in there for four weeks."

While in rehab there was no chance of obtaining alcohol, but in the outside world it was not as easy, says Steve, so he started to look for further options to help and found an addiction charity.

"I tried various places and eventually I came across Create Strength," he says.

"I started coming here just before the start of this year and have been attending ever since."

The annual Recovery Walk takes place in a different city each year, with last year's event in Wolverhampton attracting 4,000 visitors.

This year's walk in Bradford is a one-mile route around the city centre, with it beginning on Saturday at 12:00 BST in City Park.

The Shipley-based Create Strength Group is partnering with international organisation Faces & Voices of Recovery for a series of events supporting people in recovery to coincide with the walk.

Create Strength Group director Andrew Rogers is looking forward to showing visitors what Bradford has to offer.

"People come from the south of England, people come from Merseyside, Scotland, because Bradford is a welcoming place," he says.

"It's got experience of addiction from really the post-industrial period where economic opportunities have disappeared and there's been lots of different issues with alcohol and drug addiction.

"Services therefore are very good, very understanding."

He continues: "There's a real trauma-informed approach to services in the city, and Bradford Public Health in particular are a great supporter of both treatment services and, critically, recovery service - because treatment in some ways is the easier part."

The charity runs a mutual aid group, one-to-one support, mental health and wellbeing activities and helps people in recovery get into volunteering, training and employment.

After a year sober, Steve feels the national event has come at just the right time for him.

"This has been a real gentle step for me and hopefully that will continue after this weekend," he says.

"I'm in a position now where I feel I can look to get back into work."

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