Sue Cox OBE

Founder-Director Smart-Uk

Smart-UK

Member story

Biography

Sue Cox OBE, M.A.A.C Founder & Director, SMART-UK Co-Founder, Survivors Voice – Europe Sue Cox OBE is a respected healthcare professional, acupuncturist, teacher, author, and international human rights advocate. She is best known as the Founder and Director of SMART-UK, and as the Co-Founder of Survivors Voice – Europe, a survivor-led organisation supporting survivors of abuse worldwide. With over four decades of professional and lived experience, Sue is internationally recognised for her innovative work in addiction, trauma, and recovery—what she prefers to call “restoration.” Her approach uniquely integrates Chinese medicine, Western neuroscience, and lived experience, challenging deficit-based models of addiction and reframing addiction as a source of untapped human potential. Sue has trained over 30,000 healthcare professionals, and the SMART-UK programme is embedded across UK hospitals, mental health services, community services, the military, and 128 UK prisons. She also developed the Five Star Wellbeing Programme, an innovative prison-based initiative that trains prisoners as peer wellbeing coaches, supporting positive culture change from within. She is the author of The Hidden Superpower of Addiction, which offers a radical and compassionate re-understanding of the addicted brain, and co-author of Auricular Acupuncture and Addiction, the first scientific text to propose a hypothesis for auricular acupuncture as an adjunctive treatment in addiction. Sue is a survivor of childhood clergy abuse and a prominent international advocate for survivors’ rights. She has spoken in the Italian and Polish parliaments, contributed evidence to the United Nations Committees on the Rights of the Child and Against Torture, and regularly appears in national and international media. Her advocacy contributed to landmark UN findings against the Vatican for systemic failures in responding to clergy abuse. Sue received an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours for her outstanding contribution to addiction treatment in prisons, and was previously awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in addiction treatment, as well as being named Inspirational Woman of the Year for human rights. Sue brings to her work a powerful blend of science, compassion, courage, and lived experience, and remains deeply committed to empowering people affected by addiction and abuse to reclaim their worth, voice, and potential.

Professional record

Experience and expertise

Industry: Health, Wellness and Fitness
Location: GAydon, WAR, United Kingdom
Professional experience: More than 25 years
Specialty: Sue Cox OBE, Lic.Ac., MAAC Director & Founder, SMART-UK Co-Founder, Survivors Voice – Europe Passion is the word that best describes Sue Cox OBE—whether in her teaching, writing, clinical practice, or advocacy. For more than five decades, Sue has dedicated her life to supporting recovery—what she prefers to call “restoration”—from addiction, trauma, and the profound impacts of childhood abuse. Sue’s own life is one of extraordinary transformation. She believes deeply that every individual, regardless of their past, can be restored to their full and beautiful potential—often beyond what they imagined possible. As Sue says: “We are all made of the same stardust—the same as kings, popes, and everyone else. Each of us is a unique, precious, and irreplaceable part of the universe, and as such, we all deserve the very best.” Sue is a highly respected healthcare professional: a licensed acupuncturist and practitioner of Chinese medicine, counsellor, teacher, and leader of SMART-UK, a major teaching and practice organisation. Her work integrates Chinese medical theory, Western neuroscience, and lived experience, with a particular focus on the neuroscience of addiction and auricular acupuncture for substance misuse. As she explains: “Everything I teach is a synthesis of Eastern wisdom, Western science, and lived experience.” Sue was awarded an OBE in the King’s first Birthday Honours, in recognition of her outstanding and sustained contribution to the UK prison system. This national honour precedes and complements her other recognitions, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in Addiction Treatment (2010) and Inspirational Woman of the Year for Human Rights (2014). Sue is the co-author of Auricular Acupuncture and Addiction, the first scientific text to offer a scientific hypothesis explaining the mechanisms behind this valuable adjunctive treatment. She is also the author of The Hidden Superpower of Addiction, an innovative and hopeful exploration of addiction that reframes the “addicted brain” as one rich in strengths, creativity, and untapped potential. Sue challenges the conventional medical model that views people with addiction solely as “ill,” arguing that such framing is often limiting and disempowering: “Addicted people have extraordinary abilities and unrealised potential. Continually defining them by illness alone hinders real restoration.” Under Sue’s leadership, the SMART-UK programme has been embraced by mainstream services, including UK hospitals, mental health units, community services, the military, and 128 UK prisons. Sue has personally trained over 28,000 healthcare professionals, and remains deeply grateful for the mutual learning that has shaped her work. More recently, Sue developed the Five Star Wellbeing Programme for Prisoners, an innovative peer-led coaching model in which selected prisoners are trained as Five Star Wellbeing Coaches. The programme equips participants with practical tools and theoretical understanding to support the wellbeing of others and is already demonstrating highly positive outcomes. Now aged 78, Sue is a great-grandmother and the former single mother of six children. She is also a survivor of Catholic clergy abuse—experiences that profoundly shaped her early life and led to many years of addiction and emotional distress. Sue is now in her 51st year of recovery. Her lived experience, combined with professional expertise and unwavering compassion, continues to fuel her determination to help others reclaim their power, restore their lives, and soar beyond trauma.

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