When I was running the Wired In initiative in the first decade of the 2000s we emphasised the importance of empowering and connecting people in order to facilitate recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.
Recovery is something done by the person with the substance use problem, not by a treatment practitioner or anyone else. Professional treatment or engagement in mutual aid groups may facilitate recovery, but they do so by catalysing and supporting natural processes of recovery in the individual.
The second feature of recovery from serious substance use problems is that it does not occur in isolation. We used to emphasise the following: ‘I alone can do it, but I can’t do it alone’ in relation to recovery.
Although formal treatment may help people, recovery occurs in the community rather than in the clinic. Treatment is generally the start of a recovery journey and is not needed by everyone. People who access most local treatment services spend far more time in their community than in the treatment service. For those who attend a residential rehab, they continue their recovery journey upon returning to their community, where all they have learnt will be put to the test.
In the following film clip from an interview I did in June 2021 with Huseyin Djemil , Founder of Towards Recovery, for his Journeys Podcast, we discuss various issues relating to treatment and recovery.
Huseyin talks about how many treatment services view recovering people as an monetised asset that can be used to help attract more funding for their organisation, rather than focus on celebrating people’s recovery. ‘Here is our evidence that our way works, give us more money.’
He continues, ‘But what we as people in recovery really crave, is just to be people and just to have the reins of our life back in our own hands. And to be part of a community that helps and supports each other, and improves the soil of society for everyone else.’ Huseyin emphasises that parts of the system need more humanity in the way they interact with, and talk about, recovering people.
David emphasises that recovery comes from the person. Recovery is self-healing. Practitioners don’t fix people; they catalyse and support the natural resources of the person. Too many practitioners think they are the one to have done the work. David refers back to his Wired In days, particularly the time when he and his colleagues were disseminating the powerful messages of Bill White and other leading recovery advocates. He describes how many mainstream treatment services eventually started to talk about their organisation doing recovery—whilst not actually changing the way they were working.