This article is an account of a return to education course set up to cater to the needs of recovering heroin addicts in a Dublin rehabilitation project in the summer of 2008. It begins with a brief outline of the HSE Soilse rehabilitation and recov- ery programme and the rationale for seeking association with the Department of Adult and Community Education NUI Maynooth as a way of bridging both the structural and individual gaps that recovering people have en route to educational progression. A full account is presented of the actual Return to Learning (RtL) course, which employed a functional context education methodology and inte- grated literacy approach, from the reflections of the tutors who delivered the course. The Soilse/NUIM RtL is unique in terms of an adult education programme in Ireland in that it tried to grapple with two distinct yet interrelated issues; recovery from drug addiction and educational progression. The following article attempts to give a full and honest account of the programme and its outcomes.