A drugs and alcohol ”recovery village” hopes to set the standard for other programmes which help people escape the grip of addiction.
Auchincruive River Garden has six residents, all seeking to emerge from the problems that have blighted their lives through abstinence and intensive daily support.
A new resident is brought into the community every six weeks.
The project aims to reach a peak of 40 in four years – by which time the first “graduates” will hopefully making confident strides into their drug-free lives.
At the moment, organisers hope the scheme can generate enough funds to keep it running.
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By 2023, they plan to have established enough revenue streams to expand the project.
In the pipeline are a metal workshop, a dog-walking service, a full-time cafe and other craft industries on site, as well as the re-opening of the estate’s once- glorious gardens.
Founder and director Mark Bitel, a former heroin addict who has set up the centre near Ayr, believes Auchincruive can become a model that could be adopted throughout Scotland.
Mark, a sociologist, was inspired by a visit to the San Perignano Community, near Bologna in Italy, where a similar small-scale scheme blossomed into a 600-hectare that houses 1350 residents in recovery from addiction.
He said: “Like other visitors, I was looking around for the drug addicts but seeing only different types of healthy faces because lives were being transformed in San Patrignano and that’s what I want to bring to Scotland.”
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The Scots scheme has also borrowed elements of the Basta project in Sweden, where the state puts up £30,000 for every resident accepted, and Delancy Project in the USA.
But no Scottish Government funding has gone to Auchincruive amid a climate in which residential abstinence programmes are viewed with concern.
The Independence from Drugs and Alcohol Scotland group bought the plot after Mark put in £100,000 of his retirement fund, which was matched by other benefactors.
Mark said: “It’s hugely exciting to be where we are but the hard work ahead is colossal and for now we can't do without financial help.”
