When Dr Hugo Jobst walked into a candlelit church hall in Dundee at 19, he expected to feel out of place. Instead, strangers greeted him with handshakes, hugs, and a cup of tea. That evening changed his thinking about addiction medicine education entirely and planted the seed for something much bigger.

“I met people who I thought were going to be really rough and unpleasant,” he recalls. “And then I sat down and started hearing stories. Journeys from destitution and isolation into new lives full of meaning. It was incredible.”

That moment eventually became the Conversation Café, a structured programme now running across Scottish universities that is changing the way the next generation of doctors learns to treat addiction.

The Gap in Addiction Medicine Education

Addiction affects millions across the UK. According to NHS England, around 600,000 people are dependent on alcohol. A further 300,000 are in contact with drug and alcohol treatment services each year. Yet addiction medicine education has long struggled to prepare doctors for the emotional and social realities of treating patients with substance use disorders.

The traditional approach leaned heavily on lectures, biomedical facts, and exam revision. Students left with clinical knowledge but little human understanding of where addiction actually comes from.

“Historically, medical training in addiction has not been discussed in any meaningful or effective way,” says Dr Jobst, now a resident doctor in the NHS. “They’ll say adverse childhood experiences increase your risk of addiction. But you haven’t actually heard from someone who lived through those experiences and how that shaped their habits over a lifetime.”

That gap between textbook knowledge and lived human experience is exactly what the Conversation Café set out to fix.

From a Thursday Night to the Medical Curriculum

Humanising Healthcare built the programme to bring medical students and people with lived experience of addiction and recovery together for facilitated roundtable discussions. It grew out of a recognition that addiction medicine education in the UK was missing something that no lecture theatre could provide: real human connection.

Sessions follow a consistent format. A community member opens with a 15-minute personal share. Then five structured questions appear on screen. Students have 10 minutes to discuss each one before rotating clockwise to the next table.

Each session brings together 24 to 26 medical students and around 15 members of the recovery community. Participants write key themes on Post-it notes. Facilitators display these on the wall and students return to them during group reflection. Nobody examines students on what they hear. The learning is entirely experiential.

“We’ve intentionally created this format so students can take away what they want,” says Dr Jobst. “Medical school is usually bordered with strict learning outcomes that get examined. That actually gets in the way of real learning. Students end up worrying about exams rather than absorbing the experience.”

Alan Houston co-designed the programme alongside Dr Jobst. Houston is a senior addictions worker with 32 years of experience and is himself a person in long-term recovery. He is direct about why the format matters. “We want to treat people like humans, not like Mr Gout or Mr Frozen Shoulder. Not because of their addiction.”

Dr Shona Anderson is a consultant addiction psychiatrist at NHS Tayside. She brought the academic credibility that got the programme into the university curriculum. She highlights a shift that catches students off guard. “A big deal for students is realising they can’t and shouldn’t be expected to solve everything. Doctors are still sometimes expected to have all the answers. This is so much more complicated than that.”

Breaking Down Stigma in Addiction Medicine

One of the clearest patterns to emerge from the programme is how quickly it shifts attitudes. Addiction medicine education has historically done little to address the stigma that students bring with them into clinical practice. The Conversation Café tackles it head on, often within a single session.

Students arrive nervous. Some harbour quiet fears about the kind of people they might meet. Houston acknowledges this with candour. What students actually find are community members who are warm, open, and eager to talk.

“One student left after an hour and a half in tears,” recalls Houston, “saying she had learnt more about addiction and recovery in that time than in all her previous training.”

Moments of real surprise tend to come when doctors in recovery step forward to share their stories. “I’ve sat at tables and watched students’ mouths fall open,” says Houston, “when they realise the person talking about their addiction is their own lecturer.”

The programme draws participants from a broad range of recovery pathways, including people recovering from alcohol dependence, those in 12-step fellowships, and those using SMART Recovery. This diversity reflects the real population of people affected by addiction.

“Addiction doesn’t discriminate,” says Dr Anderson. “Anyone can be affected. And alongside that, students leave with something equally important: the belief that recovery is possible.”

A Life Saved on a Glasgow Bus

The programme’s most striking moment of impact happened not in a hospital but on a Glasgow bus.

Every Conversation Café now includes naloxone training. Students leave with the skills and a physical supply of the opioid reversal medication. Shortly after one session, a student spotted what appeared to be an opioid overdose on public transport. She recognised the signs, administered naloxone, and the person survived.

“It puts wind in our sails,” says Dr Jobst. “It really is worth keeping going for.”

Expanding Medical Training in Addiction Across the UK

The programme currently runs across several Scottish universities. Glasgow hosts 16 workshops across the academic year. The Scottish Government awarded seed funding after the team presented their impact data. The Scottish Recovery Consortium supports the programme as a partner.

Student feedback has been strong, even from those who did not sign up voluntarily. Many say the sessions were the highlight of their medical education, which says a great deal given how little space addiction medicine education has traditionally held in the curriculum.

Brunel University in London recently got in touch about bringing the programme south. The team at Humanising Healthcare is putting together a replicable package so other institutions can set it up in their own communities. This includes training local facilitators and building genuine relationships with recovery communities from the start.

“We know this is a really good thing,” says Dr Anderson. “We want to empower other institutions to set it up where they are.”

Recovery organisations keen to bring the Conversation Café to their area can reach out to Humanising Healthcare directly. The team will help make the connection to local medical schools. The evidence is there. So are the stories.

Source: dbrecoveryresources