A series of blogs from recovery coach Beth Burgess of Smyls. Beth has written articles about addiction recovery for the Huffington Post which means she has had a large audience.
Factors That Facilitate Addiction Recovery
Recovery is something done by the person with the substance use problem, not by a treatment practitioner or anyone else. Whilst there are a multitude of pathways to recovery, there are a number of key factors that facilitate recovery from serious substance use problems. (9,586 words) *
Factors Facilitating Addiction Recovery
In my last blog post, The Nature of Addiction Recovery, I finished by saying that I would describe the key factors that facilitate recovery from addiction in today’s blog post. In fact, I’m going to summarise these factors and provide links to my relevant blog posts of 2022 which provide much more detail. The descriptions linked to have come from a chapter of my eBook Our Recovery Stories: Journeys from Drug and Alcohol Addiction.
Hope: This hope is based on a sense that life can hold more for one than it currently does, and it inspires a desire and motivation to improve one’s lot in life and pursue recovery.
Empowerment: To move forward, recovering people need to have a sense of their own capability, their own power.
Self-Responsibility: Setting one’s own goals and pathways, taking one’s own risks, and learning one’s own lessons are essential parts of a recovery journey.
A Sense of Belonging: People recovering from addiction need to feel the acceptance, care and love of other people, and to be considered a person of value and worth.
(Gaining) Recovery Capital: Recovery capital is the quantity and quality of internal and external resources that one can bring to bear on the initiation and maintenance of recovery.
‘The Four Stages of Recovery’ by Mark Ragins
Here’s a blog I first posted back in May 2013, not long after this website first launched. Mark Ragins is a leading recovery figure in the mental health field. He was a pioneer in setting up MHA Village, a recovery community based in Los Angeles. His writings are well worth a read. Here is what Mark has to say about stages of recovery in an article entitled The Road to Recovery. What Mark says here is just as relevant to people recovering from addiction.
‘Recovery has four stages: (1) hope, (2) empowerment, (3) self-responsibility and (4) a meaningful role in life.
Judith Herman: Trauma and Recovery
1. Principles of recovery (healing)
‘The core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others. Recovery, therefore, is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections.
Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In her renewed connection with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological facilities that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience. These faculties include the basic operations of trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy.
Just as these capabilities are formed in relationships with other people, they must be reformed in such relationships.
Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD)
Here’s an article on asset-based community development which I wrote some years ago. This approach can facilitate healing in a community.
“Mental health is not a product of pharmacology or a service that can be singularly provided by an institution: it is a condition that is more determined by our community assets than our medication or access to professional interventions more generally. There are functions that only people living in families and communities can perform to promote mental health and wellbeing, and if they do not do those things; they will not get done, since, there simply is no substitute for genuine citizen-led community care (not to be confused with volunteer mentoring schemes).” Cormac Russell
There are two alternative ways to build a community in a neighborhood.
Factors Facilitating Recovery: Self-Responsibility
In my last blog posting focused on factors that facilitate recovery, I discussed empowerment. This is a key factor, as it the person with the problem who does the work in recovery.
The flip side of the fact that ‘recovery is something done by the person with the substance use problem’, is that the person has to take charge of their own recovery. Although people generally need to be supported in their recovery, they can’t be care-taken or protected into recovery. Setting one’s own goals and pathways, taking one’s own risks, and learning one’s own lessons are essential parts of a recovery journey. No one else can do the work. Self-responsibility is therefore a key factor facilitating recovery.
Why the Need for Recovery-based Care?
A resonating message I have picked from many people affected by serious substance use problems over the years is their desperate need for hope (that they can recover) and understanding (of how to recover). Here is a blog I originally posted in May 2013.
There is a dearth of readily accessible information on how to achieve recovery, information that is also relevant to the day-to-day struggles and obstacles that people face in trying to overcome addiction and related problems. Many people do not know anyone who has recovered from addiction. Many find the treatment system to be disempowering and lacking in hope.
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‘What is Recovery?’: Julie Repper & Rachel Perkins
In my blogs, I will explore the nature of recovery and will sometimes focus on the ideas of someone else (or a group of people). I’ve previously looked at how David Best has talked about ‘What is Recovery?’ David described key principles underlying addiction recovery.
In this blog, first posted on this website in June 2103, I am going to look at what Julie Repper and Rachel Perkins have to say about ‘What is Recovery?, as described in their excellent book Social Inclusion and Recovery: A Model for Mental Health Practice. They include a number of quotes about recovery, some of which I will use here.
‘Shh… Just Whisper it, But There Might Just Be a Revolution Underway’ by Peter Kinderman
I have just received two books written by Peter Kinderman from a publisher as part of a thank-you for reviewing a book proposal. The books look real good, so I thought I’d start this new part of the Resources with an excellent article by Prof Peter Kinderman which was posted on Mad in America in August 2014. I first posted Peter’s article on Recovery Stories at the same time.
‘The idea that our more distressing emotions can best be understood as symptoms of physical illnesses is a pervasive, seductive but harmful myth. It means that our present approach to helping vulnerable people in acute emotional distress is severely hampered by old-fashioned, inhumane and fundamentally unscientific ideas about the nature and origins of mental health problems.
We need wholesale and radical change in how we understand mental health problems and in how we design and commission mental health services.
Eleanor Longden: The Voices in my Head
Brilliant and very moving TED talk from Eleanor Longden.
‘To all appearances, Eleanor Longden was just like every other student, heading to college full of promise and without a care in the world. That was until the voices in her head started talking. Initially innocuous, these internal narrators became increasingly antagonistic and dictatorial, turning her life into a living nightmare.
Diagnosed with schizophrenia, hospitalized, drugged, Longden was discarded by a system that didn’t know how to help her.
Longden tells the moving tale of her years-long journey back to mental health, and makes the case that it was through learning to listen to her voices that she was able to survive.’ TED2013
Breaking Trauma Trails: Facilitating the Healing of Indigenous People (Parts 2 and 3)
2. Working towards solutions with Sharing Culture
We developed Sharing Culture as a way to help tackle historical trauma (and its consequences) and facilitate Indigenous healing.
Sharing Culture is a grassroots initiative based on the core values of authenticity, connection, courage, creativity, empathy and forgiveness. We use a strengths-based, solution-focused approach that celebrates success and fosters positivity, acceptance and cultural pride.
We recognise that self-determinism is a central foundation of healing – solutions must come from Indigenous communities. At the same time, non-Indigenous people can contribute to this healing process in a variety of ways.
One major way that Sharing Culture will facilitate this healing process is to generate high quality educational content and Stories about Indigenous healing and the healing of trauma, and distribute it in the most effective manner to as wide an audience as possible.