About Recovery Direct South Africa

Recovery Direct was formulated by Vaughan Pankhurst and the Recovery Direct team to address the fundamental shortfalls in handling addicted patient residential care, groups, after care and long-term addiction recovery. The company has grown to include a specialist network of professionals in a variety of disciplines related to the resolution of the many interrelated addiction disorders in patients.

Our programme is one of the few that addresses the underlying trauma issues on which addiction feeds. Recovery Direct runs daily intensive individual counselling sessions, as well as group therapy programmes for patients.

Specialist in psychiatric trauma counselling related to treating alcohol, benzodiazepine, cocaine, dagga and heroin addictions and general substance abuse.

In-patient Residential Facility

Recovery Direct now operates an exclusive rehab centre based in Cape Town. The facility offers patients a full spectrum of therapeutic care required from residential detox to ongoing after-care.

The luxury setting of the centre assists in the breaking down the motivational and emotional barriers for patients seeking or resisting recovery for drugs, alcohol, or other addiction disorders.

The non-punitive and patient treatment focus creates a flexible program centered around what each individual needs to undertake the first steps in their path to finding long-term recovery.

Programmes include specialist consulting psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors and medical specialists drawn from an extensive network of skilled professionals dependent on the unique requirements in the recovery of each patient.

The centre is set in a tranquil upmarket environment based in Cape Town. Away from the grind of day to day life yet still within close proximity to any required services. Patients are treated by expert recovery guides ensure that they have the support they need to break the cycles and grow beyond their addictions.

Vaughan Pankhurst & Recovery Direct.

Recovery Direct is a programme that is structured to care for patients with addictions. It is a great privilege of ours to help so many people find their path to sobriety and personal fulfilment.

If you read the paragraph on the homepage, seen my interviews, or been a part of the Recovery Direct outpatient programme you may know a bit about me and my journey through addiction.

That said,

This programme, is not about me, this programme is about the people we serve.

One evening at my home in Cape Town a conversation about the distinctions of Recovery Direct’s outpatient programme led to a conversation about completely changing the stigmas and perceptions that surround addiction and the treatment of addicts and alcoholics.

The truth still is that patients coming from formalised rehab centers, where they managed to get “clean / sober” were still only marginally better off than before they went into the formalised “detox” process.

This process of recovery had in some cases been introduced in the rehab however this treatment very rarely included the progressive thought patterning required to start actually living, clean, sober and “in recovery”. It was on this very basis that Recovery Direct had such a popular outpatient programme.

Vaughan Pankhurst

Relapse prevention is an addiction community supporting programme co-founded by Vaughan Pankurst in dealing with the greater issue of addiction in South Africa.

The site features a number of free online resources to help addicted individuals to stay on the path of long-term recovery and aims to grow to support a far wider community living in sobriety.