350: Getting Sober and Finding Purpose with Ian Young

350: Getting Sober and Finding Purpose with Ian Young

How do individuals turn their lives around after addiction? This conversation between Veronica Valli and long-time friend Ian Young shows just how extreme that change can be. Ian looks back on his journey from a “feral” squatter, rave organiser and international drug smuggler to a man with 26 years’ sobriety and a career spent helping others get clean.

He talks about being inspired by Woodstock as a teenager, moving through hippie, punk and rave scenes, and the adrenaline of smuggling drugs across European borders on fake passports while avoiding long prison sentences. What cuts through the wild stories is how miserable the end became. Ian describes his rock bottom not as a dramatic arrest, but as the moment he could no longer stand the lies and the way he treated people he loved.

High on cocaine in a West London squat, he wrote a letter beginning, “Dear God, I feel so dreadful, I’m going to make some changes,” despite not believing in God at all. That small act led, via a chance 12‑step meeting and his father’s tough love, to treatment at Promise in London. From there, the same “all or nothing” energy that once fuelled chaos went into building rehabs and recovery services.

Ian shares how he helped create young people’s units, cost-effective 12‑step centres, intervention and sober companion services, and eventually Helena in Thailand and Cyprus – combining 12‑step recovery, psychotherapy, somatic work and even hyperbaric oxygen for detox. Throughout, Veronica keeps the focus on purpose and long-term recovery, highlighting that the people who last in this field are those who still do meetings, sponsor others and put service first.

Ian is clear: staying spiritually aligned and mission-focused matters more than money or status. If you’re wondering whether a chaotic past can ever add up to a meaningful future in sobriety, this story might have you asking what mission your own recovery could be built around.