DARREN QUELCH & NYLE DAVIES
Addiction Special Interest Group
Nyle and I first crossed paths when I joined the Addictions Research Group at the University of South Wales in 2022. Nyle was finishing his PhD and I was employed to develop a training package for healthcare professionals around Alcohol Related Brain Damage. We have worked together on a few projects since; including developing a national consensus of service development needs and pathway structures for ARBD in Wales and reviewing the characteristics of individuals who co-consume alcohol and cocaine. More recently we’ve been successful on two Addiction Healthcare Goals AKT bids, which have allowed us to work closely; one exploring experiences of ketamine treatment services and another around the role that GLP-1/GIP medications might play in alcohol treatment services.
I am a GROW alumni; I completed this scheme two years ago now. I found the experience really enriching. The University of South Wales is a relatively small organisation when it comes to research, and whilst our department is quite research active, there aren’t many full time academics who are grant funded. Therefore GROW was a really great opportunity for me to connect with other researchers, at a similar stage of their career development to me, who share mutual interests and passions. I particularly enjoyed the in-person events we attended as part of the scheme and the coaching sessions. Coaching helped me gain some perspective about my current position and the difficulties associated with repeated fixed-term contracts that mid-career researchers face, and helped me with workload allocation and project prioritisation skills.
The Incubator has been paramount in helping raise awareness of the SIG and giving us a presence online. The incubator has kindly supported us with: offering advice and guidance about how social media platforms might be best utilised to promote our activities, helping design and curate our branding, helping us design, and hosting our website, provided a space where our outcomes and blog articles can be shared, and promoted our outcomes and ventures through email and social media platforms.
Since we began in August 2025 we have developed a leadership group which spans rehabilitation, acute medical, psychology, criminal justice, policy and research expertise and a mailing list consisting of over 140 interested parties representing various treatment sectors and specialities, and academic organisations. We have held four online SIG meetings within our first project theme of ‘Alcohol Dependence’, each meeting was attended by 30+ representatives.
As a result we have developed a series of research, practice and policy recommendations, informed by expert consensus and opinion relating to
- Alcohol Related Brain Damage
- Psychological interventions for alcohol dependence
- The language used and narrative around alcohol dependence and recovery
- Preparation for detoxification from alcohol.
Finally, we have also generated two collaborative blog pieces with various partners entitled “Research on the recovery journeys of ethnic minority women in the UK” and “Safe Spaces, Better Outcomes: Evidence-Based LGBTQIA+ Recovery Support”.
We are in the process of preparing to move onto our next theme for discussion at our online meetings. This will be focussed on opioid dependence, with our first topic being around long-acting injectable buprenorphine. Furthermore, we are also currently exploring with the addiction healthcare goals team, how to refine our research, practice and policy outcomes from our first theme, in order to see them disseminated more widely.
In July this year, we have been kindly supported by the Mental Health Research Incubator’s seed fund scheme to take the SIG to Drink and Drug News 2026. Here we will have a stand and engage with treatment providers, people with lived experience of addiction and service engagement and policy makers to enhance our meetings representation and inclusion, but also the impact of our research, practice and policy recommendations.
About the authors
Dr Darren Quelch is a Senior Research Fellow working in the Addictions Research Group within the Applied Psychology Research and Innovation Group. His research interests include Alcohol Dependence, Addiction, Alcohol Related Brain Damage, Pharmacology, Health Improvement, Alcohol Care Teams, Harm Reduction, Alcohol Withdrawal, Alcohol Detoxification and Management of Alcohol Withdrawal Syndromes.
Dr Nyle Davies is a senior research assistant in the Addictions Research Group. His research interests include gambling screening and intervention, systematic reviews and psychometric testing, and how these approaches feed into public health approaches to harm prevention.
