QAAD

Quaker Action on Alcohol and Drugs (QAAD)
Quaker Action on Alcohol and Drugs is a listed group of the Religious Society of Friends and a registered charity (number 1059310), which became a company limited by guarantee (number 3265669) in 1996. It is managed by a Committee of Trustees who are appointed and conduct their business in accordance with Quaker Practice as observed by the Religious Society of Friends – Quakers.

Trustees come from a wide variety of backgrounds including education, medicine, criminal justice, counselling, and dependency treatment, while some have personal experience of substance misuse themselves or in their close others.

HISTORY & DEVELOPMENT
The Charity was formed in 1870 as the Friends Temperance Union and expressed the witness of many Quakers for total abstinence. Moral Welfare was added to the title in the 1960s, when Quakers provided help for families who were trying to recover from the effects of alcohol. The name was changed again in the 1990s when the title Quaker Action on Alcohol and Drugs was adopted.

QAAD no longer takes an abstinence-only approach to alcohol, but we work entirely within the Quaker testimony of abstinence and moderation, endeavouring to include all the perspectives of contemporary Quakers.  We have a similarly inclusive approach to the various interventions and theoretical approaches that exist within the fields of misuse and dependency. QAAD also continues the long-standing Quaker concern with the problems and addictive behaviours that can arise from gambling.

QAAD seeks to address gambling and the use and misuse of all substances, legal, illegal and prescribed, within a framework of Quaker values. In our work within the Religious Society of Friends, we explore the spiritual dimensions of substance use, misuse and dependency, with a view to strengthening resilience to potential or established problems.  Our approach can be summed up in the acronynm AIR: Awareness, Information, Responsibility.