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First, can I say thank you very much to all of you who have replied to me and i really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions – i will get back to them all in the next few days.
However, i had a meeting with a medical student who i am supervising from Birmingham and she has some fascinating data that i want to share with you.
Her study tried to recruit people in alcohol recovery (abstinent) for at least one year – she recruited 53 who were split between those 1 – 5 years in recovery and those more than 5 years in recovery.
Those in longer, ‘stable’ recovery reported more self-esteem and self-efficacy and a better quality of life. So much may not be a surprise. The longer recovery group also reported more housing and relationship stability.
But here is the fascinating bit – the long term recovery group reported better ‘social relations’ quality of life – than the norm. In other words, people in long-term alcohol recovery had better social relations than the normal population.
For me, this is really exciting and I am encouraging her to submit this to a journal. This is because it confirms my suspicion that when we try to help people, we should not say that recovery will take away your symptoms but that it might make you happier than you were – even before you started drinking!
Let me know your thoughts
David
Thanks for letting us know about this at this stage. Fascinating stuff! And very exciting.
I’ve said to a number of people in recovery that they have something that I don’t – an inner serenity, happiness.
Its great to have some evidence for this. It says somewhere in the Big Book that, in recovery, your alcoholic past becomes your greatest asset because it allows you to help others who can identify with your story. For the ‘real’ alcoholic and the ‘real’ addict (if you subscribe to the definitions in the Big Book) in recovery, life has more meaning than ever before. In fact, the alcoholic drinking could be seen as the solution to a fundamental (spiritual) malady. Once the solution (drinking) stops working then the gap is filled with a spiritual way of life. Members of the North West Recovery Forum tell me again and again that their spiritual life is very practical (“faith without works is dead”). Its about helping those who still suffer. Life in recovery then takes on a whole new meaning and, crucially, has a new found purpose – its about helping others and when you are helping others you are not thinking about yourself.
Hi David this is no suprise to me, I have the view that, drug addicts and alcoholics in recovery are luckiest, blessed, whatever people around. Our addiction brings only pain but that pain, through the recovery process, if done with real willingness honesty and open mindeness can birth true self knowledge and the courage to truly live.
I have the phrase memento mori tattoo across my back as this my motto or my philosophy for living. Im not sure ordinary people have to create or seek a philosphy for living?
I was taught and reminded in my recovery to be always appreciating life, and working towards a life I and those around me appreciate and although conceptually simple, it’s a rare thing. It takes understanding and courage, and it takes HUGE effort.
Addiction treatment, at its best, teaches us real personal honesty, it demands true courage, and it prompts emotional and spiritual growth.
Teaching us through watching and growing with those who have also been addicted to decide what we want and how to get there.
The great surprise to me in recovery has been about personal responsibility and a sense of immediancy to my life, living in this way has me recognize that I control how I act, and to a large extent, how I feel. When I feel bad, I recognize the discontent as internal, and take steps that will change how I feel, and this will leads me to greater happiness.
Recovery for me is a succession of steps, all requiring courage – and the funny thing is, after a while of practice it makes me courageous!
I belive that ultimtetly we create so much pain while using or drinking, that it hardly seems fair that we are also granted this opportunity for such lasting peace and happiness. But we are and we are grateful and therefore seize the opportunity make up for time wasted and do our damdest to live a life that will leave no regrets.
Essentially it is my opinion that people in recovery have a philosophy for living that has been developed through pain and it is this personal philosophy and memory of pain I think that keeps us gratefull, striving and happy.
This fits in with my experience and has something to do with the paradoxical effects of crisis and recovery. I couldn’t have gone any lower than I was when I got help. The difficult and painful process of recovery and the amount of work I had to put in have changed me greatly.
I eventually got to the stage where I was grateful for becoming an alcoholic and addict, for it brought me to a good place; one I wouldn’t have got to without the pain.
I think there’s something about perspective too. When you’ve gone through hell, life somehow seems easier to manage and people don’t seem so difficult.
In recovery, my values returned and my spirit was reignited. I’m guessing that makes me easier to get on with and perhaps more useful as a human being.
Hello David
This makes concrete some of my own speculations and observations regarding people in longterm recovery and I’m sure these musings are shared by many others in a similiar position. I’m 20 years clean and sober – still do meetings and service – and I’ve seen a deepening in the quality of relationships both in my own life and in the lives of those around me. The children of my friends in recovery display a level of emotional literacy – an ease with difficult feelings – that demonstrates a resilience that was absent in the previous generation. Whatever the part played by nature in making an individual available to recovery, the ensuing nurture provided by fellowship allows a level of emotional growth that radiates systemically and allows for a deeper dialogue with all. It produces a feeling of safety that people detect. My conversations with my 83 year old father have a depth unimaginable pre-recovery. Ditto with my friends across the spectrum of treatment. it transcends the politics. I’d love to do a soft survey (ie one that didn’t reduce findings to percentages or categories) whereby we captured from primary sources the spirit of this development whereby a psychopathology becomes a gate to growth.
Something else I’d like to add re the current misuse of the term ‘evidence based research’ and the accompanying disdain for the word ‘anecdotal’. It seems to me more a disengenuous way of avoiding action or holding on to a threadbare status quo than a genuine desire for scholarly rigour and ethical action. The key words that spring to mind in any of the successful treatment endeavours i’ve witnessed or been participant in over the last 20 years have been naivete and incompetence. If you waited for evidence you’d do nothing.
Correction – ‘evidence based research’ (a tautology if ever there was one) should have read ‘evidence based treatment’ above.
Forgive the multiple entries… motivated by a genuine wish for clarity leavened by a sprinkling of work-avoidance.
On the question of evidence, check out Stephen Pilling (unfortunate name) Developing evidence-based guidance – implications for systemic interventions. Journal of Family Therapy – Volume 31- Issue 2 – May 2009.
(and the commentary by Mirza and Corless)
An absolutely irrelevant digression… There was a time when Ospreys, eagles, peregrines, otters et al were regarded as vermin – against nature – and killed out of hand. Now, of course, protected species all… and revered for their beauty and abilities.
The health of a society can be measured by its ability to include rather than cast out.
Having said that… In all honesty, sometimes I’m willing to have the inclusive dialogue, awash with empathy, generosity, and understanding – and sometimes I’m not, just want to batter, blame or silence. It all depends on how safe I feel.The deal for me is in having some self-acceptance re my very human fallibility. When I have that compassion for self I’m less likely to voice my fear-based prejudices.
The rather convoluted point is that the more we talk with (an aspiration of) honesty, open-mindedness and willingness the safer it feels.
Regarding evidence bases etc there is a great resource here: http://www.tc-of.org.uk/radiotc/ch3/s14/p3s14-0005.xml
I suggest listening to George De Leon, Prof Blomqvist and Michael Gossop.
As a top tip for anyone who spends time in traffic jams – I buy a bunch of cheap CDs and burn these talks onto them and listen at leisure for less than 20p. Those who listen to these will see where my ROIS ideas came from
Gerald G. May
The phrase “grateful alcoholic” occurs frequently at AA meetings. Some people are grateful simply to be in recovery, to have the resources and support that twelve-step programs provide. Others realize that their lives are more open and rich than they ever were before their struggles with addiction. For many, the gratitude is for a profound spiritual life that exists only because their addiction brought them to their knees.
“I was a willful, self-driven person before I realized I was addicted,” said one man. “My addiction defeated my will and finally led me to admit my powerlessness and to surrender to God. Without that defeat, I’m sure I would have continued to live as if I were the master of my fate. So I’m grateful because my addiction gave me the most important thing in my life: my relationship with God.”
People frequently discover or profoundly deepen their spiritual lives during recovery. Usually this is a gentle and consoling process. For some, however, there may come a time that is disconcerting, scary, and baffling to the recovering person as well as to their sponsor or spiritual director. It is a time I call the Dark Night of Recovery.
http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/resources/rg/mar_apr_05/DarkNightofRecovery.html
Makes a lot of sense
Tony
Hi David.
In your original post you said that your student had recruited people who were all in recovery, yet you state that their ‘social relations’ quality of life was better than the ‘normal population’. How can you form this conclusion if you weren’t doing a direct comparison between those in recovery and the ‘normal population’?
Or did the study include a sample form the ‘normal population’?
Dave
Hi David,
This is indeed very interesting and exciting research and I have a suspicion that there is so much more we need to investigate and understand about this. I will keep a close eye on progress. There seems to be a lot of momentum happening for a proper recovery focused research agenda at the moment and look forward to seeing lots of other people joining us on this journey.
Andy
I’m hard-pressed to see the “fascinating” part. Logic dictates that the further one is time-wise from alcohol abuse, the more stable and happy one will likely be. I’m also hard-pressed to see the significance of findings based on questions asked a cherry-picked group of fifty-three total participants. It stands to reason that those who willingly participate in such questioning are likely to consider themselves happier than those who refused to participate. I also find the “happier than normal people” assertion questionable. What criteria were used to define them, and how many of them participated in the study? I’m also wondering about your “recovery” definition… are you referring to AA members, ex-AA members, non-AA members, or all of the above?
I wonder where this small sample of 53 people in recovery came from. I guess the majority came via AA, NA, rehab or some other support organisation because people who’ve given up substance misuse independently are pretty much untraceable. I have been sober for over 6 years but because I finally sobered up on my own, apart from librium prescriptions, nobody knows I’m here, so I would be highly unlikely to be picked up by any research. I’m afraid that I cannot agree that I am happier than someone who has never been addicted. I’m happier than I was when I was drinking but that’s it. I think the sample are happier because of a sense of finally belonging to something. However, in my area, the only group I could join is AA. I’ve tried it, but I don’t need help to stay sober any more and as an atheist it is just not for me. So I remain the person I was before I drank, a lonely outsider with the added burden of 25 wasted years to carry. Any research that does not include people who’ve “recovered” independently, (and there are a lot of us) is, I feel, potentially skewed.
