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
January 18, 2023 by
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.
Recovery as an Organising Construct – Bill White Interviews Larry Davidson
July 10, 2021 by
William L White and Larry Davidson are two of my recovery ‘heroes’. In this 2013 paper from his website, Bill interviews Larry about mental health recovery. As the former says, Larry was ‘one of the earliest pioneers in studying and promoting the concept of recovery related to severe mental illness.’ Here are Larry’s answers to two of Bill’s questions. [I have shortened the paragraphs for easier online reading.]
‘Bill White: How is the emergence of recovery as a new organizing paradigm changing the design and delivery of mental health services in the United States?
Larry Davidson: I think the biggest change that the recovery paradigm has introduced, and the change that poses the most difficulty for traditional clinicians to understand and accept, is that recovery is primarily the responsibility of the person rather than the practitioner.
‘The Four Stages of Recovery’ by Mark Ragins
July 8, 2021 by
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.
Factors Facilitating Recovery: Self-Responsibility
May 8, 2021 by
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.
‘The Four Stages of Recovery’, from Mark Ragins
May 31, 2013 by
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 the four 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.
