Our Drinking Problem: Recovery and Bad Aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-159
Author(s):  
Trysh Travis
Keyword(s):  
Substance Abuse ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Twelve Step ◽  
Personal Recovery ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
Drinking Problem

Abstract Both the lived experience and the literature of twelve-step recovery resist the ethics and aesthetics of distance, irony, and authorial agency that hallmark modernism and postmodernism. As a result, authors (and sophisticated readers) with substance abuse problems have often struggled to align their ideas of literary value with recovery’s focus on simplicity and earnestness. Neil Steinberg and Sara Bader’s Out of this Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to Recovery (2016) is a compendium of inspiring quotations that acknowledges and seeks to offer a way around this problem. Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering: Life after Intoxication (2018) blends the author’s personal recovery narrative with a literary historical attempt to explain it.

Recovery colleges: long-term impact and mechanisms of change

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly Thompson ◽  
Laura Simonds ◽  
Sylvie Barr ◽  
Sara Meddings
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
College Attendance ◽  
Personal Recovery ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Educational Paradigm ◽  
Long Term Impact

Purpose Recovery Colleges are an innovative approach which adopt an educational paradigm and use clinician and lived experience to support students with their personal recovery. They demonstrate recovery-orientated practice and their transformative role has been evidenced within mental health services. The purpose of this study is to explore how past students understand the influence of the Recovery College on their on-going recovery journey. Design/methodology/approach An exploratory, qualitative design was used and semi-structured interviews took place with 15 participants. Data was analysed using the “framework method” and inductive processes. Findings All participants discussed gains made following Recovery College attendance that were sustained at one year follow-up. Three themes emerged from the data: Ethos of recovery and equality; Springboard to opportunities; and Intrapersonal changes. Originality/value This research explores students’ experiences a year after attendance. This contrasts to most research which is completed immediately post course. This study contributes to the emergent evidence base highlighting the longitudinal positive impact of Recovery Colleges. This study is of value to those interested in recovery-oriented models within mental health. Recovery Colleges are gaining traction nationally and internationally and this research highlights processes underlying this intervention which is of importance to those developing new Recovery Colleges.

Recovery-oriented support work: the perspective of people with lived experience

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 457-468
Author(s):  
Dagmar Narusson ◽  
Jean Pierre Wilken
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Health Care Services ◽  
Recovery Process ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Personal Recovery ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Mental Health Difficulties ◽  
Support Work

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on individuals who experience mental health difficulties with the services they receive from “support workers” as part of a personal recovery model, this study will obtain individuals reflections, experiences and opinions on how support helps them stay well and facilitates their personal recovery process. Recovery is seen through the lens of the CHIME framework (Connectedness–Hope–Identity–Meaning–Empowerment). Design/methodology/approach The sample size included 13 people who experience mental health difficulties and are receiving support from mental health care services. The structured interview was designed based on the INSPIRE measurement and the CHIME framework structure. The qualitative content analyses, discursive framing approach and CHIME as a framework made it possible to examine the key activities of recovery-oriented support work revealed in the data. Findings Participants valued the enhancement of hope provided by support workers and also expressed it was important as they were non-judgemental. Identity and meaning in recovery could be enhanced by sharing powerful stories about the individuals’ own life and health experiences, and those of support workers or others. Inclusive behaviour in public spaces and trying out new interest-based activities together were considered as empowering. Originality/value This research helps to understand the value of personal recovery support activities given the societal changes (tension between survival vs self-expression values) and highlights the need for value-based recovery-oriented education and practice.

scholarly journals A hero’s journey: becoming and transcendence in addiction recovery

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-166
Author(s):  
Lymarie Rodriguez-Morales
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Alcoholics Anonymous ◽  
Ethical Conduct ◽  
Hero's Journey ◽  
Twelve Step ◽  
Addiction Recovery ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
The Uk

This article presents findings from a study that explored young adult men’s lived experience of addiction recovery whilst participating in Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Step fellowships in the UK. It argues that changes in self-narrative and temporality might be critical features of the experience of addiction recovery in young adults, facilitating the process of individuation. Examples from the participants’ accounts are provided to illustrate the changes in their sense of identity in light of their recovery trajectories. Participant recovery, as in the mythical hero’s journey, shows itself to be a quest through transformation and growth into a genuine and balanced selfhood, necessitating the difficult transcendence of an unwholesome selfhood that was manifested in their addiction. In mythical literature, the hero develops authenticity and a higher ethical conduct as the result of a process of individuation, and we can find evidence to suggest a similar occurrence in the participants’ journeys. Finally, I reflect on the limitations of the biomedical language of addiction and the potential implications of the hero’s journey myth in the delineation of a more humane and empathic discourse on young men’s recovery and selfchange.

scholarly journals Walking side-by-side: Recovery Colleges revolutionising mental health care

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Sommer ◽  
Katherine Gill ◽  
Jane Stein-Parbury
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Health Staff ◽  
Personal Recovery ◽  
Mental Health Staff ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Group Interviews

Purpose The Recovery College model is an innovative approach to providing education to consumers, carers and mental health staff, with the potential to facilitate both personal recovery gains and organisational transformation towards recovery-focused service provision. The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of students who attended the South Eastern Sydney Recovery College (SESRC). Design/methodology/approach An exploratory, descriptive qualitative design was employed with data collected through seven focus group interviews with consumers and mental health staff who had participated in courses run by the SESRC. Thematic analysis of the data was conducted using both deductive and inductive processes in order to interpret the data. Findings All participants were positive about their involvement in the RC. Four themes emerged from the thematic analysis: connection with others, hope for the future, the importance of the lived experience, and changing attitudes and systems. Originality/value The outcomes of this study indicate that the SESRC is achieving its aims in relation to both personal recovery gains, and the potential to impact on service transformation. It highlights the centrality of co-production as a fundamental aspect of the Recovery College model. This paper contributes to the emerging evidence base for this model and provides evidence that this model is applicable to the Australian context.

Participants’ lived experience of pursuing personal goals in the Illness Management and Recovery program

2020 ◽  
pp. 002076402095447
Author(s):  
Sofie B Jensen ◽  
Lene Falgaard Eplov ◽  
Kim T Mueser ◽  
Kirsten Schultz Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Goal Setting ◽  
Personal Goals ◽  
Illness Management ◽  
Personal Recovery ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Illness Management And Recovery ◽  
Phenomenological Research Design ◽  
Time Required ◽  
Recovery Program

Background: The Illness Management and Recovery (IMR) program is designed to support people diagnosed with severe mental illness in developing tailored illness-management skills and to pursue personal goals. Although IMR is a goal-oriented program, little is know about the participants’ experience of goal-setting as part of IMR. Aim: To describe participants’ lived experience of personal goal-setting as part of the Illness Management and Recovery program (IMR). Method: A descriptive, phenomenological research design was employed with individual interviews. Results: IMR helped the participants break down their personal goals into manageable short-term goals. The main themes were as follows: ‘We were guided to set clearer and specific goals in IMR’, ‘We were encouraged to pursue our personal goals in IMR’ and ‘We were encouraged and supported to resume work on our goals when we stopped making progress’. The findings emphasise goal-setting in IMR as a means to instilling hope for the future and work on goals. Conclusions: The participants learned to identify, articulate and initiate work towards short- and long-term goals when guided by the instructor and supported by peers in the IMR group. Goal-setting is a useful method for breaking down personal recovery goals into a practical short-term goals and motivating participants to pursue them. The findings indicate goal-setting is an important part of the IMR-program, but suggest that flexibility in goal-setting is needed, especially in the time required to achieve personal goals.

scholarly journals Personal recovery and socio-structural disadvantage: A critical conceptual review

2021 ◽  
pp. 136345932110142
Author(s):  
Dimitar Karadzhov
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Recovery Process ◽  
Mental Health Recovery ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Personal Recovery ◽  
Structural Disadvantage ◽  
Mental Health Difficulties ◽  
The Impact

Despite its seeming breadth and diversity, the bulk of the personal (mental health) recovery literature has remained strangely ‘silent’ about the impact of various socio-structural inequalities on the recovery process. Such an inadequacy of the empirical literature is not without consequences since the systematic omission or downplaying, at best, of the socio-structural conditions of living for persons with lived experience of mental health difficulties may inadvertently reinforce a reductionist view of recovery as an atomised, individualised phenomenon. Motivated by those limitations in extant scholarship, a critical literature review was conducted to identify and critique relevant research to problematise the notion of personal recovery in the context of socio-structural disadvantage such as poverty, homelessness, discrimination and inequalities. The review illuminates the scarcity of empirical research and the paucity of sociologically-informed theorisation regarding how recovery is shaped by the socio-structural conditions of living. Those inadequacies are especially pertinent to homelessness research, whereby empirical investigations of personal recovery have remained few and undertheorised. The gaps in the research and theorising about the relational, contextual and socio-structural embeddedness of recovery are distilled. The critical review concludes that personal recovery has remained underresearched, underproblematised and undertheorised, especially in the context of homelessness and other forms of socio-structural disadvantage. Understanding how exclusionary social arrangements affect individuals’ recovery, and the coping strategies that they deploy to negotiate those, is likely to inform anti-oppressive interventions that could eventually remove the structural constraints to human emancipation and flourishing.

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