Peter Lyndon-James - Page

10/10/2026

GIDGESTOCK & SHALOM HOUSE COMMUNITY COMING TOGETHER TO CHANGE LIVES

What an incredible partnership this continues to be!

For the past few years, Shalom House has been proud to partner with Gidgestock Music Festival, with our team volunteering their time and hands-on help to get the festival set up and ready to go. And we’re not finished yet! Our team will be back in the coming weeks to help with the pack-down.

Today, Des and Krystal had the privilege of attending the festival, sharing a speech and expressing their heartfelt thanks for the incredible support Gidgestock continues to show Shalom House.

As one of Gidgestock’s beneficiaries, Shalom House receives a generous donation from the funds raised over the weekend, helping support the life-changing work happening within our programs.

This partnership is about so much more than setting up and packing down an event. It’s about community, generosity and people coming together to make a real difference in the lives of others.

A HUGE THANK YOU TO STEVE AND JO!

Thank you for your generosity, your ongoing support and for continuing to partner with Shalom House year after year. We are incredibly grateful for all you do and absolutely love partnering with you both!

Thank you to everyone who makes Gidgestock possible and to everyone who supports the festival. Your contribution reaches far beyond the music, helping change lives and create hope for the future.

Here’s to many more years of working together and making a difference in our community!

THANK YOU, GIDGESTOCK!

Shalom House, “Leading the way in Australia in Holistic Rehabilitation, Reintegration & Re-Socialisation”

09/10/2026

SHALOM HOUSE — HELPING PEOPLE REBUILD THEIR LIVES

Yesterday I joined Carl Liebold on Voice of Freedom to share my story and talk about the work we do at Shalom House.

For the past 16 years, I’ve worked with people whose lives and families have been torn apart by addiction. Behind every person who comes through our doors is a family who wants their loved one back.

Our work goes beyond getting someone off drugs or alcohol. It’s about taking responsibility, restoring relationships, building confidence and learning to live, work and contribute again.

Shalom House is 100% self-funded, with no government grants. Residents who reach Stage 4 and go on to graduate are debt free, receive a car and leave Centrelink benefits for full-time employment. Those are practical steps towards an independent life.

Thank you, Carl, for the opportunity to share the heart behind this work.

Watch the conversation here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/csVOXdW7aBw

Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

https://www.youtube.com/live/csVOXdW7aBw?si=tKrXaJiM9aGBgw5c

An Amazing Story. Peter Lyndon-James went to jail the first time a...

07/10/2026

SHOULD AUSTRALIA BE WORRIED?

I've spent a lot of time travelling through Europe over the last year, including Paris, France, London Etc, and I've seen firsthand the pressure mass migration is putting on those cities.

Right now France is going through the worst unrest its school system has seen in decades. More than 6,000 people have been arrested, most of them teenagers. Over 700 police and more than 200 students have been injured, and high school classes have been suspended nationwide.

It started in September over overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and run-down buildings in poor suburbs like Seine-Saint-Denis, where about a third of residents are immigrants. But it hasn't stayed a student protest.

The Interior Minister now calls it urban violence, with masked individuals targeting teachers and police. Palestinian flags have been photographed at protests, and the government has accused the far left of exploiting the chaos.

Before anyone says it can't happen here, look at what Australia has been through since August last year. Tens of thousands marched against immigration, with clashes and arrests in Melbourne and neo-Nazis trying to hijack genuine frustration.

Then in December, 15 people were murdered at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi in an ISIS-inspired terror attack, our deadliest mass shooting in 30 years. There is now a Royal Commission into antisemitism and social cohesion.

Net overseas migration added around 300,000 people last year. About a third of Australians were born overseas, close to the highest share on record. Ask any parent trying to get their kid into a local school, or any young person looking for a rental, whether our infrastructure is keeping up.

This isn't about blaming migrants. Most people who come here work hard and want the same things we do. It's about governments bringing people in faster than they build for them, and ignoring struggling communities until the problems boil over.

Cold hard facts, corrected when wrong.

What's your thoughts…? Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺

Sources:
- TIME: https://time.com/article/2026/10/06/france-student-protest-in-photos/
- Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/6/demonstrators-clash-with-riot-police-in-france-as-education-protests-mount
- CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/06/europe/france-student-protests-intl
- franceinfo: https://franceinfo.fr/societe/education/blocage-des-lycees/la-violence-que-l-on-rencontre-c-est-inedit-dans-les-mouvements-lyceens-estime-laurent-nunez_8224660.html
- Fox News: https://www.foxnews.com/world/france-explodes-students-riot-education
- 2026 French lycée protests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_French_lyc%C3%A9e_protests
- The New Daily (AAP), March for Australia: https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/crime-news/2025/09/01/immigration-rallies-crime-australia
- Times of Israel, Bondi Royal Commission: https://www.timesofisrael.com/inquiry-finds-that-days-before-bondi-shooting-jewish-group-warned-auss
- AP, Bondi inquiry: https://fox5sandiego.com/news/world-news/ap-international/ap-australian-jews-tell-antisemitism-inquiry-of-surge-in-hate-before-bondi-hanukkah-massacre/amp/
- ABS (population): https://abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/sort
- ABS (country of birth): https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/8-things-interest-about-australias-overseas-born-population

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07/10/2026

WHAT ADDICTION DOES TO FAMILIES

Addiction rarely destroys just one life.

Behind the person trapped in addiction there is often a family living through the consequences, parents who stop sleeping, partners who stop trusting, children who learn to live with uncertainty, and brothers and sisters who quietly wonder where they fit in all the chaos.

Families become exhausted from the midnight phone calls, broken promises, financial strain and the constant fear of what might happen next. Eventually, living in crisis can become normal.

That is the collateral damage of addiction.

I wrote Collateral Damage: The Hidden Cost of Addiction for those people.

Most conversations about addiction naturally focus on the person using, how to get them into treatment, how to stop the drugs, how to keep them alive and how to help them recover.

But who is helping the family recover?

This book is about the parent, partner, sibling, grandparent and child who has been carrying someone else’s addiction, sometimes for years.

I know the damage from both sides. I spent 26 years in active addiction, and I know that while I was destroying my own life, the people who loved me were paying a price as well.

Sometimes the person struggling with addiction eventually gets help — but the family is left carrying years of anger, guilt, fear, mistrust and hurt.

Recovery shouldn’t only be for the person with the addiction. Families need to recover too.

That is why I wrote Collateral Damage.

If addiction has touched your family, this book was written for you.

peterlyndonjames.com.au

07/10/2026

UNDERSTANDING ADDICTION — MY METHODOLOGY

One of the hardest things about addiction is knowing what to do and when to do it.

What may help one person can be completely ineffective for another, because not everyone struggling with addiction is at the same place in their journey.

That is why I developed the A–E3 Methodology.

My book, Understanding Addiction: The A–E3 Methodology, explains how to identify where a person is at in their addiction journey and, importantly, what to do based on where they are at.

After 26 years in active addiction and years working with people and families affected by addiction, one thing has become very clear to me: you cannot deal with every person in addiction the same way.

There are different stages, different behaviours and different levels of willingness to change.

Sometimes helping means support.

Sometimes it means boundaries.

Sometimes it means allowing consequences to happen instead of continually rescuing someone from them.

And sometimes the very thing we believe is helping is actually making it easier for the addiction to continue.

The A–E3 Methodology provides a framework to help families and others understand where the person is at, what is happening, and how their response needs to change accordingly.

You cannot control another person’s addiction.

But you can understand it, recognise where they are at, and make better decisions about what you do next.

That is what this book is about.

Understanding Addiction: The A–E3 Methodology
By Peter Lyndon-James

peterlyndonjames.com.au

07/10/2026

SO YOU’RE IN PRISON — NOW WHAT?

Prison has a way of stripping life back very quickly.

Your freedom is gone. Your choices are limited. Your relationships are under pressure. The doors lock behind you and suddenly you have a lot of time to think about how you got there and what happens next.

I know that world.

I spent years caught in addiction, crime and prison. I also know that walking through those gates doesn’t have to mean your life is finished.

So You’re in Prison — Now What? is written for the person sitting in a prison cell wondering exactly that.

Now what?

You can spend your sentence blaming everyone else, counting the days and waiting to get out.

Or you can start using that time to work out what needs to change.

Because eventually the gate opens.

And if you haven’t changed, you can walk straight back into the same people, the same thinking, the same behaviours and the same circumstances that helped put you there in the first place.

This book isn’t about pretending prison is easy. And it isn’t about telling you what you want to hear.

It’s about what you can do with the time you have.

Your past explains how you arrived where you are.

It does not have to decide where you go from here.

So You’re in Prison — Now What?
Peter Lyndon-James

peterlyndonjames.com.au

05/10/2026

GREAT TESTIMONY OF A PARENT

Last Saturday, my husband, my daughter and I had the privilege of visiting my son at Shalom House for the family barbecue and family meeting.

What a beautiful afternoon it was. Isaac had no idea we were coming, and the surprise on his face when he saw us was something I will never forget.

As a mum, it is very hard to put into words what that afternoon meant to me.

For the past four years, we have watched our son slowly become someone we hardly recognised. Addiction took away so much of the young man we knew and loved. There were times when we wondered if we would ever truly get our son back.

But on Saturday, for the first time in such a long time, I felt like I was sitting with my son again.

We watched him eat something we hadn’t seen him do properly for so long. We listened to him talk and have a real conversation with us. He was present, he was engaged, and he was connecting with his family again.

Those might sound like simple things to some people, but to us they meant everything.

Sitting there listening to him speak and seeing the changes in him after only one month at Shalom House was incredibly emotional. I looked at my husband and my daughter, and I think we all felt the same thing we were starting to see Isaac again.

One of the biggest highlights for me was also seeing the culture within Shalom House. The respect the residents have for one another, for the staff and for the families and visitors was beautiful to witness. We were made to feel so welcome, and it was amazing to see the residents supporting, encouraging, and looking out for each other.

As a family, we are incredibly grateful for where Isaac is today. We know he still has a journey ahead of him, and we know change doesn’t happen overnight. But after seeing the progress he has made in such a short time, we have hope again.

We are looking forward to our Saturday visits and watching him continue to grow and move forward through the program.

To all the staff and residents at Shalom House, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you for the work you do, for the program you provide and for the way you support and encourage each other every day.

I would recommend Shalom House to any family who has a loved one struggling with addiction and genuinely wanting the opportunity to change their life.

For a long time, we felt like we had lost our son.

On Saturday, we got to see a part of him coming back to us.

And as a mum, there are simply no words to describe what that means.

Thank you, Shalom House, for giving Isaac this opportunity and for giving our family something we haven’t had for a very long time: hope. ❤️

Shalom House is “Leading the way in Australia in Holistic Rehabilitation, Reintegration & Re-Socialisation”.