The author, John Sheppard is an experienced and qualified drug and alcohol worker who has had his own personal encounter with addiction and who tragically lost the closest person to him through her fatal addiction to alcohol and prescribed medication. Since overcoming his own addiction some thirty years ago he has spent the intervening years working in the field of substance abuse and recovery. He managed a residential rehabilitation centre in Melbourne for almost ten years before co-founding a daytime healing centre in the same city. He spent various tenures as a board member and manger at that centre which had the then Governor of Victoria as its patron. The author has also been a board member of two other not for profit organisations, co-hosted a weekly community radio program about addiction, contributed to or been part of many government or organisation sponsored working parties and committees and worked with an Aboriginal Family Violence program. He has a diploma of Clinical Hypnotherapy and qualifications as a Thought Field therapist, Neuro Linguistic Program practitioner and Qui Jong practitioner.. He lives in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia, has four children and four grandchildren. He loves his family - all of them, photography, the Australian bush, travel, camping and has the deepest compassion for and connection to those suffering from addiction in its many forms and the people closest to them.
