Shared Experience

People who are being treated for an addiction receive the support of professional organisations as well as family and friends. Many of them say they could not have beaten it without their partner's help. But who recognises the role of close family members in getting an addict through tough times? Fi Glover hears from three people living with partners in various stages of addiction about how they have coped.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Fortunately, most people will not have the experience shared by Fi Glover's guests this week. Peter spent six years working in Georgia. The day before he was due to fly home from the posting, he was kidnapped at gunpoint and held in squalid conditions for six months. Contrast that with another Peter who surfed and drank beer while his ship was held for three months during the blockade of the Suez Canal. Sarah meanwhile was setting out across Kenya to work in an orphanage in neighbouring Tanzania when the bus she was travelling in was held up by bandits and driven off-road into the bush. The interesting thing that emerges from their conversation is that two of them appear to have coped better with their experiences, while one man subsequently struggled.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

"At nights I'd find myself praying to God to kill me" - 13 year old James shares his story of being bullied at school. He and two other teenagers George and Paris tell Fi Glover how they came through some very dark days of being physically and verbally attacked by fellow pupils for being different.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Life is going fantastically well and the world is full of promise, and then it takes a dramatically different turn one day when an accident changes things for ever. This happened to the three guests in this week's programme - David broke his neck diving into a shallow ocean pool in Australia, Sian was hit by a taxi on holiday and Kelly suffered severe burns and injuries to her leg following a car crash. Their injuries were life changing. They share their experiences of dealing with the after effects with each other and host Fi Glover

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

A new series of Shared Experience begins with a listener who responded after hearing the programme in which four mothers talked about the pain of leaving their children. Daniel got in touch wanting to talk about his own experience of being left by his mother at the age of ten. He talks to Fi Glover and meets Sam, the Mum from the original programme who left her daughter while she battled addiction. What takes place is a painfully honest discussion about the emotional damage Daniel and Sam's daughter suffered.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Three very different people come together to discuss the experience of mental breakdown, starting with the moment they realised what was happening.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

'I love my son but I just don't like him anymore.' explains one woman in this programme that deals with the subject of family estrangement. Three people share their stories with Fi Glover of how they came to the decision to cut ties with either parents or children.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Four survivors of deadly events tell their stories to Fi Glover and how they dealt with the aftermath. Stories include being attacked by a Great White shark, surviving a plane crash, being in Japan when the earthquake struck and surviving an IRA bomb attack on a coach.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

"That first drink and it was like woohoo, a party going off in my head" Three people with different addictions talk frankly to Fi Glover about falling off the wagon. In Lisa's case, one cocktail was all it took to get her back on hard drugs and alcohol. For Richard, it was putting a one pound coin into a slot machine and winning the jackpot, while Simon was in such denial about his addiction that he used drugs as a way of abstaining from alcohol, so that technically he could say he wasn't relapsing.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Shared Experience is a new series. Fi Glover and guests sit round a kitchen table to share strange tales that turn out to be unexpectedly common. In the first programme Fi talks to people who've seen a ghost. Fi's guests have come from different places, with different backgrounds; they live very different lives. But they have one experience they all share - the day they saw a ghost and what happened to them after. In Britain, strange tales are more common than you think.