NINE North Somerset residents in drug and alcohol recovery have received "lifesaving" dental work through a collaboration between North Somerset Council and local drug and alcohol support service With You.

A number of With You were experiencing severe pain from oral health problems caused by prolonged substance misuse, impeding their recovery journeys.

Ringfenced council funding to improve drug and alcohol treatment and recovery services was used to help the clients in urgent need of dental care.

Over eight months, they visited Dental Spa 25 in Weston-super-Mare to receive oral healthcare treatment such as antibiotics for abscesses and infections, tooth extractions, and root canals.

Some have completed their treatment and others are in the final stages of receiving their dental work.

Cllr Jenna Ho Marris, North Somerset Council executive member for public health, said: “These issues were having a significant negative impact on people’s physical and mental health and stopped them from getting the treatment they wanted and needed. In some cases, it was leading to increased drug use to self-manage the extreme pain they were experiencing.

“The results have exceeded what we hoped to achieve. As well as preventing people from returning to drug or alcohol use to self-medicate, it’s humbling to know that a relatively simple intervention may have helped to save someone’s life.”

Tracy (not her real name) said: “I used to drink a lot of red wine, and around 10 years ago all my gums swelled up.

"I went to a dentist and they told me I had gum disease, caused by my alcohol consumption and malnutrition.

"He told me that all my teeth would fall out, so I started to drink more heavily.

“But then I found With You. I began a 12-week programme and that got me sober. Then around two years ago, some of my teeth started to come loose and they fell out. My gums used to bleed, and I’d get abscesses – it was so painful.

“Six teeth fell out within the space of a year and a half. It looked awful. I knew that I didn’t want to live like that, and at one point, my mind went to suicide.

“I tried looking for a dentist - I called everywhere, but nowhere was taking on new NHS patients and I couldn’t afford the work myself. I’d nearly given up hope, but then almost out of the blue, through the project, I was given a set of dentures.

“If it wasn’t for the dentures, I’d still be drinking. For me, this dental work has saved my life."

Gill Flanagan, service manager at With You in North Somerset, said: “A lot of the people we work with have trauma in their lives, and they use drugs or alcohol as a tool to cope with the pain, loss and grief that they’ve experienced.

“At With You, we support people to face this trauma in their own way so that they can begin their drug and alcohol recovery journeys. But as our clients started to reduce or stop their drug or alcohol use, they told us that their dental pain was preventing them from being where they wanted to be in their recovery. So we knew that if we were going to best support our clients, we needed to find a way to address their oral health issues.”