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People often ask me where I got my name from and are surprised when I say my parents. But it has led me to realise both the power of names, labels, the arguments of social constructed realities or not, identities and who owns them and how they are forged.
Yet, there I was running up and down the mountain in the dark with a head torch, (and I thought the drug taking was dangerous and others thought it mad,) when I became increasingly uncomfortable with the label or title of service user involvement and was wondering if anyone else struggles with this.
The key problem being ‘involvement’, although I acknowledge all the endless debates about ‘user’ or not.
I kinda realised it has recently felt a bit like a patronising, ‘You can be involved with what we do, but do not upset or want to change things’ sort of view of involvement.
Involvement in what, by who? Involvement in someone else’s party – not the folk doing, stopping and recovering from use
And then I just got stuck on the power and the labeling and wondered if it mattered.
I can remember times of there being no places around any tables for users, so surely involvement is a good thing.
And then where do I, and others, stand on the ‘client’ and ‘user’ label discourse. Or does it matter? Is it not more important to look at how services treat people rather than what they call them? Or is what they call them a symptomatic descriptor of how they treat them?
But why involvement, and not partnership or ownership or control?
I have found myself very confused, and wondered if any one had made any sense of it?
My mate just told me to stop getting wound up in semantics. We both know what is genuine involvement and had not experienced it yet. That did not mean that it does not exist.
So I am glad I have a simple uncomplicated name given to me by my parents and not a power-loaded description of status within a structure of provision given to me by others… but there again.
Wulf
I absolutely hate the label “service user” I was a user of many substances and services for a long time and now I am in recovery don’t use either. The work I now do is with Volunteers and Clients of our service/s
I attend Smart meetings where I am Carl, not Carl an addict or alcoholic, we find labels unhelpful, this upsets some, at a recent training event the trainer was challenged about not using labels in our meetings, he said that he had used solvents 25 years ago, so should he still call himself a “glue sniffer”. decide for your self.
Our D.A.A.T. have just re-named their S.U.I. programme the Ambassador Scheme a good start in my opinion.
With Recovery firmly on the agenda now, times, attitudes and labels are changing.
I haven’t got time to rant about “involvement” but I am with you on most of the things you say.
It’s a tough call. I mean how to describe so many things around addiction and recovery, because whatever words we go for, they can develop redundancy as they get tired, blurred and stigmatised. Look at the word “recovery”: already hijacked and reduced in some places.
How I manage this is that I don’t confine myself to just one description. I am both PeaPod the recovering addict (something I celebrate and have pride in) and PeaPod the professional.
I’m a son, brother, uncle, professional, leader, sponsor, sponsee, dancer, writer, thinker, lover, etc. etc. I am not just one of these things I am all of them and much, much more and even within the words, I don’t always fit.
Others are like this too and I need to keep reminding myself that when I confine those around me to one box with a label on the front, I diminish both them and myself.
I try not to get caught up so much in the labels that I strangle myself, but use them to emphasise all my facets.
I could probably write a few lines on some other names that have been applied to me over the years, but in the interests of ego and self interest, I’ll keep them to myself for now.
